Top issues for next patch release

[CodeRedFox]

well my whole point is no one like playing with snipers, as it stands now, there is no skill behind it.

[Cerberus]

I hate playing with snipers... especially when there is one in a squad. They serve extremely little purpose to the squad, unless they have an SVD (Soviet squads in the Cold War each had an SVD for medium - long range support).

M24 and M95 should not be in squads.

[Suicide Commando]

Well if this mod aims for realism then there will be skill involved, and if the mod aims for teamwork then snipers could be built into that. I personally think they should be used sparingly on specific maps and maps should have specific missions...if no sniper is required then there is no reason to have them available. Anyway we all know teamwork only really happens in clan games.

[BLind]

i think snipers could be a very good part of the game aslong as thier done properly and arent able to dolphine dive and headshot everything in thier path.

Limit thier number to a few per side. Make thier weapons powerful but should have an extremely low rof (increase bolting time, the jump on the semi's) meaning they can pick off 1 or 2 guys or pin down a squad but not destory it (unless they stand still).

[Gunfighter34ID]

I like the designated marksman idea, but the problem is that you've got a limited number of classes available to play around with unless and until they figure out a way to add more. It wouldn't break my heart to see sniper done away with entirely, but I'd just as soon have it somehow restricted to one per team and modified in as many little ways as possible so that it requires skill to be a really effective sniper.

Right now you've got the following classes:

Assault
Support
Engineer
Medic
Anti-Tank
Special Forces
Sniper

So what's the best way to remodel the class structure to more accurately reflect the way real military units are organized?

1), we have have to keep the anti-tank class because it's unlikely we're going to see tanks completely done away with. But to make this more utilitarian, as some have suggested we should make this a dual class. In other words, one primary weapon selection would be an anti-tank weapons system, the other would be a MANPAD SAM system.

2), we should just do away with Special Forces. On some maps you might want to have one side as Special Forces, and that could be a map specific thing, where the players would have the Special Forces player models with their soft caps and scarves, but would otherwise have the same class layout as on the conventional maps.

3), we're rid of SF, which gives us a free class. Since one of the key elements of a US fire team is a grenadier equipped with an M203 grenade launcher, we replace the SF class with a new "grenadier" class. The grenadier is armed with an M16/M203 and a variety of 40mm grenades.

4) Assault. We've replaced SF with a grenadier, but now what happens to assault, and who is going to do the SF role? Well, you've got a couple of options left for the latter, but the former is obvious. The basis of the infantry, the heart of any army worthy of the name, is the rifleman. The "assault" class gets renamed rifleman, and the new "rifleman" class has the option of using either the M16 rifle or M4 carbine.

Whether the rifleman should be given C4 or not is another matter, and I'm of two minds on this. In the real world, a rifle squad will generally have an allotment of disposable M136 anti-tank rockets (AT4s). In the game, they don't exist. So giving the rifleman class C4 has the dual benefit of giving infantrymen the ability to defend themselves against armor (while at the same time making armor operate more like armor should in an urban environment: in cooperation with infantry), while also giving infantrymen the ability to destroy enemy equipment like artillery, UAV trailers, radars, etc., which is frankly something they should have, be it through thermite grenades, rolling grenades down the barrels of the artillery, or simply removing the breechblocks.

In order for this to work and not become an enormous carnivale of "silly putty" madness, you have to give each riflemen only a couple of charges while drastically toning down the amount of damage the charges can do to AFVs (especially tanks), yet making it so that one charge can destroy any enemy infrastructure target. I think the way you would have to go about this would be to make the C4 about half as strong (it would take four to take out a tank, so a pair of soldiers would have to coordinate their actions, maybe two to take out a LAV or less), while also making the infrastructure targets much softer so one (even weakened) charge can take them out.

This adds several dynamics to the game. The aforementioned necessity of armor to work with infantry in constricted terrain, the necessity of infantry to work together to defeat armor, a requirement that teams employ actual tactics to win rounds by having to not just rush at each other to take the next contested objective, but they also have to defend their own assets much more seriously in the process.

5) Engineer. Instead of giving the C4 to the rifleman, we could give it to the Engineer, who would retain the option of using a shotgun (and yes, various types of combat shotguns are being used extensively in Iraq, both officially and unofficially) or his other primary weapon would be an M16 (or better yet, an M4 to compensate for his heavier load). Get rid of the anti-tank mines altogether, and if you do find a way to put in the AT4, this is the guy who gets it. Retaining the shotgun lets you, realistically, keep a little bit of weapon variety but you can still incorporate this class directly into your fire team.

6) Medic, who stays the same with the exception that his weapon choices become the same as those of the rifleman, i.e., M16 or M4 carbine, or maybe you make it an M4 and a shotgun due. Shorter range, more defense-oriented weapons might serve to keep the medic more focused on his role.

7) You've got Support. I think there are two ways you can go with this that work, depending on what you do with your final class. First, make one of the primary weapons an M249 and the other an M14 (G3 would work in the interim until an M14 model could be introduced). Whether you put optics on the M14 or not is up to you, but at least a trijicon sight or something of that nature would probably be appropriate. It would still be valuable even without optics due to the vastly superior killing power and better range and accuracy of the rifle.

8.) And finally we come to Sniper, that beloved uber-class of button-mashing, faux-experten everywhere. My instinct would be, for now, to do away with this class altogether and come back to it later once the mod has progressed further along and sniping can be addressed more comprehensively as an issue.

As I've stated elsewhere, I'd love to see this class replaced by a CVC (combat vehicle crewman)/aircrew class that was armed only with a pistol, a couple of magazines, and a smile. Only these crewmen could operate vehicles of APC size or larger or aircraft of any type. If at all possible, they would not be able to affect captures, as the whole idea of a helicopter hovering over an objective and taking it as absurd in extremis. In the real world it's the infantry that destroys the enemy by fire, maneuver, and close combat and repels his advances with fire, and that's how it should be in a mod that touts itself as "Project Realism". This CVC class would have to be prevented from kit changes to prevent abuse and force them to work closely with the infantry players as part of a team.

Now your class structure looks like this:

Rifleman
Grenadier
Support
Medic
Engineer
AA/AT
CVC/aircrew

So let's assume we're playing on a 32-player server, meaning 16 players per team. So what does an actual rifle squad consist of? Usually two fire teams of four or five men plus a squad leader. We'll just do the US side because the enemy side would be a mirror image with their own weapons:

Squad Leader (This is just the commander, as on a server this size, the commander would basically just be the leader of a reinforced rifle squad. Ideally he would be a Medic or Engineer to increase the number of these available to the team.)

Fire Team A
Rifleman (Team Leader..."squad" leader in BF2 parlance)
Grenadier
Support (M249)
Medic
Rifleman+
AT/AA (ATGM)

Fire Team B
Rifleman (Team Leader..."squad" leader in BF2 parlance)
Grenadier
Support (M249)
Medic
Rifleman+
AT/AA (ATGM)

Fire Team C*
Support (M14 DMR)
AT/AA (SAM)
Engineer

*"Fire Team C" is just a catchall element to include players who would be assets controlled directly by the Squad Leader (commander).

+These riflemen could be either replaced with Engineers, removed from Teams A & B and placed in Team C as CVC/aircrew, or just retained as riflemen depending on map, etc.

If possible, it would be nice to see the squad structure already in place when the round starts, and then the players would just join whatever classes they wanted on either a first-come, first-serve basis (preferably) or according to their kiddie-BF2 rank.

[BLind]

still think there should be a sniper class, i mean what kind of urban infantry map is it gonna be without a few snipers ontop of buildings puttting down some sparadic fire

thye just need to be nerfed so thier extrmely vulnerable while on the move/ out in the open

[Suicide Commando]

Don't snipers in the real world work in pairs, you have the sniper and the spotter. Maybe some sort of point system can be worked out to give snipers working together more points (for teamwork?).

I thin we need whatever these guys are using (slightly graphic video) - http://www.gagreport.com/bizarrenews%20 ... 20Iraq.htm .....ok maybe we don't need that

[Gunfighter34ID]

still think there should be a sniper class, i mean what kind of urban infantry map is it gonna be without a few snipers ontop of buildings puttting down some sparadic fire

thye just need to be nerfed so thier extrmely vulnerable while on the move/ out in the open

I'm just making suggestions, and I highly doubt most of them will get acted on. Heck, none of them may get acted on, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Again, I feel the need to stress the point that snipers are highly trained marksmen and scouts who go to rigorous schools, whether they're in the Army or Marines, that have extremely high failure rates. And they have to be in good shape, have high AGCT scores, and be expert marksman before they can even be considered for these courses in the first place. In the real world they work in two man teams and they generally do reconnaissance and take out high value targets.

They are also used for interdiction and to support the fire and movement of conventional units, but they're discreet, precision assets. No sniper in his right mind would risk giving away his position taking random potshots at some guy just to "rack up a score". Incorporating sniping into the game in a meaningful way, at least to a mod named "Project Reality", would suggest that revamping the sniper class is going to take a lot of work, and since the way it is now it's a highly unbalancing class it's best to just take it out and come back to it later when it can be addressed more fully and replace it with something that could be useful and fun without unbalancing gameplay at this time.

You will notice in my suggestion above that I included a role for designated marksmen. Sharpshooters are far more common than snipers, and has been noted before snipers comprise a very, very tiny proportion of actual shooters in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

Don't snipers in the real world work in pairs, you have the sniper and the spotter. Maybe some sort of point system can be worked out to give snipers working together more points (for teamwork?).

I thin we need whatever these guys are using (slightly graphic video) - http://www.gagreport.com/bizarrenews...0in%20Iraq.htm .....ok maybe we don't need that

They work in pairs. In the unit I was in the combination was usually an M21 for the sniper and an M203 or M14 for the spotter. When they got M24s the spotters started using the old M21s for the most part.

And you already have that rifle in the game, or a close equivalent. It's probably an M82, M95, or XM-107(?), forget the designation of the new .50 cal. sniper rifle they're using. Makes you wonder how the crackheads who developed vanilla BF2 could think that it would ever take more than one .50 caliber round to take someone out of action.

[Suicide Commando]

So in that video its just a round? Not explosive or anything? Messy!

[Heydude235]

I like the designated marksman idea, but the problem is that you've got a limited number of classes available to play around with unless and until they figure out a way to add more. It wouldn't break my heart to see sniper done away with entirely, but I'd just as soon have it somehow restricted to one per team and modified in as many little ways as possible so that it requires skill to be a really effective sniper.

Right now you've got the following classes:

Assault
Support
Engineer
Medic
Anti-Tank
Special Forces
Sniper

So what's the best way to remodel the class structure to more accurately reflect the way real military units are organized?

1), we have have to keep the anti-tank class because it's unlikely we're going to see tanks completely done away with. But to make this more utilitarian, as some have suggested we should make this a dual class. In other words, one primary weapon selection would be an anti-tank weapons system, the other would be a MANPAD SAM system.

2), we should just do away with Special Forces. On some maps you might want to have one side as Special Forces, and that could be a map specific thing, where the players would have the Special Forces player models with their soft caps and scarves, but would otherwise have the same class layout as on the conventional maps.

3), we're rid of SF, which gives us a free class. Since one of the key elements of a US fire team is a grenadier equipped with an M203 grenade launcher, we replace the SF class with a new "grenadier" class. The grenadier is armed with an M16/M203 and a variety of 40mm grenades.

4) Assault. We've replaced SF with a grenadier, but now what happens to assault, and who is going to do the SF role? Well, you've got a couple of options left for the latter, but the former is obvious. The basis of the infantry, the heart of any army worthy of the name, is the rifleman. The "assault" class gets renamed rifleman, and the new "rifleman" class has the option of using either the M16 rifle or M4 carbine.

Whether the rifleman should be given C4 or not is another matter, and I'm of two minds on this. In the real world, a rifle squad will generally have an allotment of disposable M136 anti-tank rockets (AT4s). In the game, they don't exist. So giving the rifleman class C4 has the dual benefit of giving infantrymen the ability to defend themselves against armor (while at the same time making armor operate more like armor should in an urban environment: in cooperation with infantry), while also giving infantrymen the ability to destroy enemy equipment like artillery, UAV trailers, radars, etc., which is frankly something they should have, be it through thermite grenades, rolling grenades down the barrels of the artillery, or simply removing the breechblocks.

In order for this to work and not become an enormous carnivale of "silly putty" madness, you have to give each riflemen only a couple of charges while drastically toning down the amount of damage the charges can do to AFVs (especially tanks), yet making it so that one charge can destroy any enemy infrastructure target. I think the way you would have to go about this would be to make the C4 about half as strong (it would take four to take out a tank, so a pair of soldiers would have to coordinate their actions, maybe two to take out a LAV or less), while also making the infrastructure targets much softer so one (even weakened) charge can take them out.

This adds several dynamics to the game. The aforementioned necessity of armor to work with infantry in constricted terrain, the necessity of infantry to work together to defeat armor, a requirement that teams employ actual tactics to win rounds by having to not just rush at each other to take the next contested objective, but they also have to defend their own assets much more seriously in the process.

5) Engineer. Instead of giving the C4 to the rifleman, we could give it to the Engineer, who would retain the option of using a shotgun (and yes, various types of combat shotguns are being used extensively in Iraq, both officially and unofficially) or his other primary weapon would be an M16 (or better yet, an M4 to compensate for his heavier load). Get rid of the anti-tank mines altogether, and if you do find a way to put in the AT4, this is the guy who gets it. Retaining the shotgun lets you, realistically, keep a little bit of weapon variety but you can still incorporate this class directly into your fire team.

6) Medic, who stays the same with the exception that his weapon choices become the same as those of the rifleman, i.e., M16 or M4 carbine, or maybe you make it an M4 and a shotgun due. Shorter range, more defense-oriented weapons might serve to keep the medic more focused on his role.

7) You've got Support. I think there are two ways you can go with this that work, depending on what you do with your final class. First, make one of the primary weapons an M249 and the other an M14 (G3 would work in the interim until an M14 model could be introduced). Whether you put optics on the M14 or not is up to you, but at least a trijicon sight or something of that nature would probably be appropriate. It would still be valuable even without optics due to the vastly superior killing power and better range and accuracy of the rifle.

8.) And finally we come to Sniper, that beloved uber-class of button-mashing, faux-experten everywhere. My instinct would be, for now, to do away with this class altogether and come back to it later once the mod has progressed further along and sniping can be addressed more comprehensively as an issue.

As I've stated elsewhere, I'd love to see this class replaced by a CVC (combat vehicle crewman)/aircrew class that was armed only with a pistol, a couple of magazines, and a smile. Only these crewmen could operate vehicles of APC size or larger or aircraft of any type. If at all possible, they would not be able to affect captures, as the whole idea of a helicopter hovering over an objective and taking it as absurd in extremis. In the real world it's the infantry that destroys the enemy by fire, maneuver, and close combat and repels his advances with fire, and that's how it should be in a mod that touts itself as "Project Realism". This CVC class would have to be prevented from kit changes to prevent abuse and force them to work closely with the infantry players as part of a team.

Now your class structure looks like this:

Rifleman
Grenadier
Support
Medic
Engineer
AA/AT
CVC/aircrew

So let's assume we're playing on a 32-player server, meaning 16 players per team. So what does an actual rifle squad consist of? Usually two fire teams of four or five men plus a squad leader. We'll just do the US side because the enemy side would be a mirror image with their own weapons:

Squad Leader (This is just the commander, as on a server this size, the commander would basically just be the leader of a reinforced rifle squad. Ideally he would be a Medic or Engineer to increase the number of these available to the team.)

Fire Team A
Rifleman (Team Leader..."squad" leader in BF2 parlance)
Grenadier
Support (M249)
Medic
Rifleman+
AT/AA (ATGM)

Fire Team B
Rifleman (Team Leader..."squad" leader in BF2 parlance)
Grenadier
Support (M249)
Medic
Rifleman+
AT/AA (ATGM)

Fire Team C*
Support (M14 DMR)
AT/AA (SAM)
Engineer

*"Fire Team C" is just a catchall element to include players who would be assets controlled directly by the Squad Leader (commander).

+These riflemen could be either replaced with Engineers, removed from Teams A & B and placed in Team C as CVC/aircrew, or just retained as riflemen depending on map, etc.

If possible, it would be nice to see the squad structure already in place when the round starts, and then the players would just join whatever classes they wanted on either a first-come, first-serve basis (preferably) or according to their kiddie-BF2 rank.

Yes i like this idea this should be how the full mode is set up with the at drinking tanks and aircrew flying stuff

[CodeRedFox]

I like the Idea of :

Rifleman
Grenadier
Support
Medic
Engineer
AA/AT - No AA as it stands now
CVC/aircrew

That would be way more fun to play. Yes snipers are apart of real life but when it comes to this games no one like playing with them. I say take them out. Were trying to drop the crowd that plays these roles bad (There are some good sniper players out there)

I do disagree with "This CVC class would have to be prevented from kit changes to prevent abuse and force them to work closely with the infantry players as part of a team." cause this is still a game and you dont want ppl getting board sitting around.

[Heydude235]

Yes snipers are apart of real life but when it comes to this games no one like playing with them. I say take them out.

I disagree sniper should be able of be in the game. Maybe as a pickup kit.

[Suicide Commando]

Not for the next patch but for the future, and I'm not sure how far it has een discussed. But we need pilots to stop people going medic or sniper and then jumping in an airplane, same thing goes for tank crew! Maybe 3 pilots max, two for airplanes and one in a chopper to transport people.

[Wolfmaster]

A pilot class is one of the things that has been confirmed to be under construction.

[Suicide Commando]

cool

[Heydude235]

Ok dude sniper arnt ever comming out of this mod i hope you know that.

[Wolfmaster]

I wouldn't be so sure Heydude. Long(er) range rifle combat won't be removed, but we might see the snipers be replaced with a sharpshooter class (and the appropriate weapons) as a more realistic class with the average BF2 combat range.

[Rg]

Sharpshooter class would be pretty cool.

[Lev_Astov]

How about making that GAZ 39371 Vodnik finally float like it's supposed to? I would love to be able to putz around the water in that thing!

[Lev_Astov]

Oh, and the damage and bullet velocity of the CWIS Phalanx guns needs to be updated like the Tunguska so it actually is capable of shooting down aircraft.