The case against Al Basrah

[Caboosehatesbabies]

In my opinion, this map needs to be either changed drastically, or removed entirely from PR .85 or .9.

Why:

No INS spawns in village. If an ammo cache spawns out in village towards the middle of a round, there will, 9/10 times, be no way to get their except to walk due to the palace bridges being down and the civi cars being destroyed.

The "city" (more like block) is too open. Unlike Ramiel, which has allies and streets everywhere, there are only 5 streets spread out through the town, meaning it is very hard to flank the british without being seen.

Too few spawn points. You only get to choose Mosque or Palace, and the GB can effectively cut off half the map to the INS by putting an APC on the west palace bridge after it is down, a APC on the East strip of land, and an APC on the road just north of the mosque. These areas have great fields of fire, are flat and open all around, making it impossible to sneak up on the armor, and putting an APC at both ends of the main NorthSouth road basically seals off half the city west of the mosque. Now, you might say, "Build Hideouts" and while I support this system, it segweys to the next part.

Map is to open. Ramiel gives you tons of buildings to hide a hideout in, korengal has rough terrain and foliage, Al Basrah has barren sand dunes. It is almost impossible to keep a hideout up near the village it is so open, and the city is so small you can't hide one very well inside it.

Too much armor. As mentioned before, if and APC or tank sits far enough back from the city in a nice, flat area, they can dominate that spot until the ammo runs out. All they need is a halfway decent crew watching the approaches and they can sit there the whole time.

Al Basrah was a good fight in .75, in .8 it comes down to luck for the INS, if too many caches spawn outside the city, they are boned.

[Fluffywuffy]

Screw this we'll play battlearena.

I agree on the spawns but not the vehicles.
Did the tickets get changed for INS? They were good the way they were. Except arresting civies.

[Rudd]

iirc civis can now repair the bridges

Basrah is only bad in how the urban areas are made, and that imo is only because its an older map.

having open AND urban areas increases strategy, and makes the map more interesting.

Brits, if they are together, will dominate the open fields, which leaves the insurgents with only hit and run tactics to use aggressively, which is a good aspect of the map, adaptation is a desired skill.

But, insurgents will dominate inside the city, thanks to IEDs and prepared positions.

Too much armor. As mentioned before, if and APC or tank sits far enough back from the city in a nice, flat area, they can dominate that spot until the ammo runs out. All they need is a halfway decent crew watching the approaches and they can sit there the whole time.

heaven forbid we give the ability for people to work together and use terrain to their advantage.

Its a version of symmetrical balance, and is excellent, even if some of the mapping techniques are alittle old school in comparison to the urban beauty of Muttrah or Ramiel

[Truism]

None of these problems are really indicative of something with Al Basrah, they're all critical failings of the present insurgent faction.

Especially the armour one. There need to be civilian punishment rules for that one so that you can make your own cover as an insurgent.

[Outlawz7]

The same issues exist or were possible since I started playing in 0.5, but back then Insurgents were able to overcome this a lot faster and more successful than now.

[cat]

Map is to open. Ramiel gives you tons of buildings to hide a hideout in, korengal has rough terrain and foliage, Al Basrah has barren sand dunes. It is almost impossible to keep a hideout up near the village it is so open, and the city is so small you can't hide one very well inside it.

This is EXACTLY why I avoid ramiel. Basrah has a focus on the town, reducing the combat area to about 1 km2. Ramiel uses a lot more of the map which makes the game too slow. I spend most of the time looking for the enemy instead of having combat.

Also a map being hard for the insurgents is what I expect from the game mode. This is one of the coolest features of this mdo to have actually asymetrical battles.

Its a version of symmetrical balance, and is excellent, even if some of the mapping techniques are alittle old school in comparison to the urban beauty of Muttrah or Ramiel

Basrah is a lot better looking than the other city maps. It has this very special "living" feel

[gazzthompson]

i agree with everything said in OP post

[Outlawz7]

Also a map being hard for the insurgents

as in an extremely senseless, ridiculous and annoying while it's a walk in the park for the coalition team?

[cat]

as in an extremely senseless, ridiculous and annoying while it's a walk in the park for the coalition team?

Actually most games i played on basrah (which was a lot on that 24/7 battlearena) were won by insurgents. The brits killed many however getting to the caches was anothe thing.

And yea if I was a random guy with an ak I would expect that it is going to be hard against a conventional army. i do not need "balance" in a realistic shooter. Also if I was having a good game I do not really care who won in the end. What counts is the expiernce while in combat.

[Skodz]

Huh? Removing Basrah from PR ? No way. I believe its a very popular one.

I do prefer to play it as British but it can be fun as Insurgent too, especially with those explosive cars

Sneaking behind a british armor with the big super bomb truck and waiting for it to look behind before to detonate the bomb, its priceless

[TeRR0R]

Basrah is still a great map. Biggest problem in Basrah is the lack of random spawns and the much limited resupplys for ins (ammo and bombcars).

[00SoldierofFortune00]

This is EXACTLY why I avoid ramiel. Basrah has a focus on the town, reducing the combat area to about 1 km2. Ramiel uses a lot more of the map which makes the game too slow. I spend most of the time looking for the enemy instead of having combat.

Ramiel is 10x better than Basrah. Basrah is just an outdated map in the way it was designed. Whether you like Ramiel or not, Ramiel has much more of a "living" feel to it because it is much more realistic in its layout and terrain. Basrah has a destructable village to the west, small village in the center of the map, mosque, a useless VCP, and the mosque and that is pretty much it. The maps just too open for an insurgent team to be effective in it because you know where they are going to be. With Ramiel, they have an element of surprise.


And Ramiel is always focused on fighting because it is centered around the couple of streets around the caches, so I don't know how you could say it doesn't keep the combat area focused. WIth Basrah, you may get 1 or 2 routes to approach from because it is so open, making it ia slaughter for both sides.

Also a map being hard for the insurgents is what I expect from the game mode. This is one of the coolest features of this mdo to have actually asymetrical battles.

The map is not supposed to be hard for the insurgents, it is supposed to force them to use an unconventional way of combat to win. Basrah is set up symmetrically because it is a head on fight and the insurgents have no rooftops or buildings to hide in to ambush from.

[Cobhris]

How about putting pre-built insurgent hideouts in other parts of the map to spawn from. I don't play Basrah much (I'm more of an AAS guy), but an insurgency map should never limit the insurgents to spawning out of 1 or 2 easily campable locations. There should be insurgent spawns everywhere; in houses, in the village, nestled between a couple of sand dunes, on the small eastern island, possibly even under a highway bridge. Just have so many of them that the coalition team would get raped trying to destroy them all.

[gazzthompson]

or on small maps reduce hideout distance to 150m

[BattleArena4]

Actually most games i played on basrah (which was a lot on that 24/7 battlearena) were won by insurgents. The brits killed many however getting to the caches was anothe thing.

Actually we kept statistics on nearly every round played on .75 Al Basrah and it was around 53% in favor of the British team. This doesn't seem that unbalanced. Considering we were the number 2 PR server based on average players according to Game-Monitor from Jan - Aug I think I can safely say no other server had more rounds of Al Basrah played on it that ours.

Al Basrah is a brilliant map and plays well as originally designed. There was probably a bit too much reworking to stop crashes.

The map was so brilliant that we started developing a web based RPG based on it. We stopped developing it when .8 was released.

[unrealalex]

Screw this we'll play battlearena.

I agree on the spawns but not the vehicles.
Did the tickets get changed for INS? They were good the way they were. Except arresting civies.

Hey dude! I posted the screenie of the three of us with rpgs on the roof of that building with the cache the one where you blew us up later lol.

The map was so brilliant that we started developing a web based RPG based on it. We stopped developing it when .8 was released.

that would have been pretty cool

Basrah V2 is excellent with the spawns.

[vishuddaxxx]

I dont mind assysmetrical war fare, but the insurgenst have some major dis advanatges, their spawn times should also be assymetrical, but at the moment insurgenst have to suffere the same spawn time lenghts as conventional army, if their spawn times was reduced it would make for a better fight, they also need things like medic caches around houses so they can heal them selves...

Al basrah is a classic map, and was the most fun in 0.5 (although perhaps a bit arcadey) I think OP is right in many regards.. the brits do have too much armor, one tank , one apc and one scimi is enough I think at most... hell get rid of the scimi and leave it as one tank and one apc...

[Fluffywuffy]

Expand map to 4km extending the city and village everything on the map to 4km. Then add Apaches. Remove Challenger.

[Caboosehatesbabies]

Actually we kept statistics on nearly every round played on .75 Al Basrah and it was around 53% in favor of the British team. This doesn't seem that unbalanced. Considering we were the number 2 PR server based on average players according to Game-Monitor from Jan - Aug I think I can safely say no other server had more rounds of Al Basrah played on it that ours.

Al Basrah is a brilliant map and plays well as originally designed. There was probably a bit too much reworking to stop crashes.

The map was so brilliant that we started developing a web based RPG based on it. We stopped developing it when .8 was released.

Yeah BA, I agree, Basrah was a lot of fun in .75, but with the (mostly) positive changes in .8 it's showing it's age. The map is just not balanced at ALL without the spawns scattered around the the reduced # of RPG's.

The map needs a big redesign to stay.

I don't know why people don't play the more balanced maps like Ramiel or Korengal and still play this one.