The case against Al Basrah

[Caboosehatesbabies]

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

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.

Should this be allowed to happen? Is it a good thing that a coordinated armor squad can cut off more then half the map for the insurgents?

[charliegrs]

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.



that would have been pretty cool

Basrah V2 is excellent with the spawns.

was this last night? {monday night} and did you get blown up by a bradley? i think i was there too. you were shooting rpgs at me as i was hiding in a building with my squad lol

[cat]

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.

That is exactly what is missing in Ramiel, roof access. On basrah you many more possibilities to access roofs. And dont say that civilians have hooks. That does not count, because for one plyaer to get roof access he has to have an unarmed "hook-*****" for climbing.

All insurgents should get hooks. Because since they live inthe place they would have access to houses

[torenico]

Basrah V2 Remake? Rhino, work NAW

[Rhino]

Basrah V2 Remake? Rhino, work NAW

lol, Duckhunt would have my neck if I even swapped out a building on Al Basrah

Na the biggest problem with Al Basrah, and really just the insurgents in general is lack of spawns, this is being addressed in .85

[mp5punk]

agree with you there brotha!

[Dude388]

You can always count a DEV or moderator to bring things to a happy end!

[00SoldierofFortune00]

That is exactly what is missing in Ramiel, roof access. On basrah you many more possibilities to access roofs. And dont say that civilians have hooks. That does not count, because for one plyaer to get roof access he has to have an unarmed "hook-*****" for climbing.

All insurgents should get hooks. Because since they live inthe place they would have access to houses

Ramiel has 100x as many rooftops as Basrah and better ones at that. On Basrah, you have the one big rooftop at the village which is wide open with only a satilitte dish for cover and the static vanilla BF2 2 story rooftop which has no cover either. The buildings in and around Mosque are pretty useless since no caches generally spawn there and the UK stay clear if Mosque anyway. And the rooftops of the destructable buildings at the two villages are useless because they have no cover. Hell, the destructable buildings are useless when the UK have a tank, schimitar, and apc to their advantage.



I don't know how you could say Basrah has many more rooftop access when it is clear as day it doesn't. Ramiel has the new 2 story rooftops which have railings around them so you can actually crouch and still be behind cover, the other two story buildings that were stacked from the vanilla models, the big arched 2 story buildings with stair and roof access, the regular vanilla 2 story buildings, and other buildings which you can access with grappling hooks. Don't forget the new huge 4-5 story enterable buildings either.


And if you cannot get on a rooftop, then you must not be working in a squad. Either get a civi which isn't hard and someone will do it, or just steal a US engineer kit or use the accessable rooftops. Ramiel gives you plenty of opportunities to ambush from, not just rooftops either. There is nothing in Basrah which can be used to ambush from because it is so predictable, especially if you are approaching from the desert.


Ex. That two story building East of VCP serves no purpose now for either UK or Insurgents. Its just too predictable. Basrah just needs a revamp like Muttrah or it should just go the way of other outdated maps.

[Solid Knight]

He has a good point. The GB Armor can sit well out of accurate RPG range and just go to town on the INS spawns and bascially spawn rape the Mosque and Palace holding a good portion of the INS team back while other squads take out caches. If the cache isn't in the immediate area of the Mosque or Palace the INS team is screwed.

[Rhino]

He has a good point. The GB Armor can sit well out of accurate RPG range and just go to town on the INS spawns and bascially spawn rape the Mosque and Palace holding a good portion of the INS team back while other squads take out caches. If the cache isn't in the immediate area of the Mosque or Palace the INS team is screwed.

again, the problem here is in fact lack of spawns as if there was more spawns if the British armour did just rape the mosque / palace, then insurgents could easily spawn at different locations, having a tank or APC sit outside RPG range is very realistic and the insurgents should not be trying to shoot the tanks while they are out there, instead try and luar them in onto there IEDs where they are venerable.

[fuzzhead]

I agree of course that Al Basrah has some big issues with the Insurgent faction (as it always have). Do I think Al Basrah was perfect in v0.75? Well obviously not

I think right now in v0.8 its very fun to play as GB and US Army on Al Basrah, Operation Archer, Ramiel and Korengal, but its much more of a "chore" to play on the insurgent faction. Rarely does working as a squad/team on the insurgent faction really benefit you as an individual player very much, and I think thats the number one difference in terms of gameplay between the conventional armies and the insurgent factions.

Understand that the Insurgency Game Mode (and by association, all maps with insurgency on them) has always been the PR team's experiment to bring asymmetrical balance to PR. As you might have noticed, its harder than it sounds

Theres a few things hampering insurgent teams at the moment from benefiting from teamplay, I'll list those things here:

- No squad spawn point such as RP's. This makes grouping together as a squad far more difficult

- No revive system. This means that when you DO manage to group together, and your buddy is taken out, there is no redemption after his death and all he has to look forward to is a long walk back to your position, with no chance that his buddies can help him out.

- Defensive nature of weapons cache. Although I think adding random weapon cache system was a great idea, it does suck in the sense that Insurgents always have to be on the DEFENSE, which seems a bit against their real life nature of a "hit and run" force.

- Lack of optical weapons. It means players in insurgent squads will always be at a disadvantage in ranged combat.

Of course, this is the nature of assymetrical gameplay. Insurgents are not SUPPOSED to fight like a Coalition team, we want them fighting in a different style, using guerrilla style tactics. However, its a fine line between guerrilla tactics and lonewolf run and gun, which I think has been the problem on the insurgent faction for a while now.

Taking v0.75 Insurgency as an example, the insurgents were often chaotic and not very organized, using "gamey" tactics and was favored by lone wolf players out for a couple kills but little teamwork. This does not mesh well with all the other factions / maps in PR, where a high level of teamwork is needed in order to become successful. I believe the same should be the goal for the insurgent faction, needing teamwork to successfully complete objectives (which in this case is defending caches and destroying enemy reinforcements). I dont think v0.75 was at this point and I think the random spawn point solution was a wrong approach (not to mention the unfortunate side effect of crashing servers with high population due to limitations with the BF2 engine).

The way forward for insurgency relies alot of getting the Insurgent faction up to speed, giving them the tools to have successful teamwork but at the same time reinforcing the idea that this faction CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be played with the same tactics you would use with a conventional army. Its a very tricky balance, one that I don't think has been acheived yet but we will keep striving towards that direction anyways.

Being more specific, I agree with the following statements regarding Al Basrah:

- Insurgents do not have enough mobility, especially when it comes to moving to an area where a new cache is located.

- British Armor/APC presence is over-dominating on the map with well coordinated British team, especially when weapon cache is spawned in the open ground.

- British receive intel too quickly on caches, not giving the insurgents enough time to setup proper ambushes and defense points.

- Insurgents do not have a spawn system currently with which to work as a cohesive squad, even if that squad is using ambush style tactics rather than full on conventional fire fights.

- British receive too many tickets and therefore too many chances to get all caches. They can afford to be very wreckless with their armor vehicles and still manage to successfully complete all objectives by a wide margin.

Al Basrah is being worked on along with the rest of the Insurgency maps for v0.85. We want it to still be fun and rewarding to use teamwork on the Insurgent side, just like it is on the Coalition side.

[OkitaMakoto]

That is exactly what is missing in Ramiel, roof access. On basrah you many more possibilities to access roofs. And dont say that civilians have hooks. That does not count, because for one plyaer to get roof access he has to have an unarmed "hook-*****" for climbing.

All insurgents should get hooks. Because since they live inthe place they would have access to houses

Find a work around for having a max ladder limit or model some stair statics for all vbf2 buildings

And as Rhino said, its not like its gone unnoticed. I said it in another thread but ill say it here too

Because PR is always evolving, always changing, there are always changes that effect something that was "near perfect" in a previous release. Be it a gamemode, a certain vehicle, etc. All of these are getting tweaked and other things are getting tweaked that effect them. Especially gameplay things like Insurgency

We noticed a great change in INS mode in .8 from previous versions due to a lot of changes directly in the gamemode and from other unrelated changes. All this means is that we have to make sue with a slightly "unpreferred" style before another version comes out to fix these issues.

BUT, keep in mind it wont be a bed of roses[or at least not entirely] there might be some other changes introduced that either dont work out or just effect INS moed in a way we couldnt forsee. You know?

In the end, just know its being worked on, understand that we are always willing to listen and work to make INS mode and all aspects of PR perfect, but also know that this might take more than a release or two

<3



ps In hindsight I think Ramiel is simply too large in terms of city. Though this isnt terribly bad, I DO wonder how it would play out if the newer west half of the city were not included... Who knows, theres always other releases... Keep in mind this is only from a week of playing as I had to leave my PC behind a week after .8 was released Im glad some people like it though

[Teek]

What if, The squad could spawn at random locations 100m from the SL?
You select the SL, you spawn about a block away from him and you hoof it from there?
If the Squad finds Bluefor, and some mates died, they respawn on the other side of the street from the SL, providing an instant ambush?
They would spawn in all directions, so they are attacking from all sides.

[Rhino]

What if, The squad could spawn at random locations 100m from the SL?
You select the SL, you spawn about a block away from him and you hoof it from there?
If the Squad finds Bluefor, and some mates died, they respawn on the other side of the street from the SL, providing an instant ambush?
They would spawn in all directions, so they are attacking from all sides.

its a nice idea but I can't see it being workable code wise.

[Glimmerman]

I love Al Basrah they way it was in .75, it was perfect for both sides!

In Al Basrah V2 they brought back that good old feeling of .75 but with 0.8 gameplay, i love it!

[Psyko]

when the insurgents are attacking as individuals, its more like a little squad of it's own. An RPG on a rooftop, a sniper on the hotel, a PKM sprinting around a street corner, 3 bomb cars working on their own, ambushers everywhere. how is one squad supposed to deal with loads of little deadly squads, all with major kits? i say, to give the insurgents a squad feel, they should have requestable squad kits with kit rotations to avoid, the inability to access an important kit for squad purposes, to keep insurgents talking and to give the commander a better job.

but to keep that ins feel, i would suggest nice kits and keep all the kit loadouts, but thats just me waffling

try and luar them in onto there IEDs where they are venerable.

Because on Al Basrah there is so many pathways for vehicles to take and the junctions are so far back, the suicide vehicles are used far more than the ambusher kits, which irl perhapse it should be the other way round. There is a lack of ambush positions in Al Basrah methinks, like on korengal, the US spawn into a meatgrinder of IEDs a lot of the time because their pathway is alligned in one direction. But on al basrah its far more chaotic. Bridges galore, land bridges etc.

oh and btw, i have NEVER EVER seen three APCs surrounding AL Basrah at one time, its not practical and so its never done.(because the RPGs are deadly at long range if you know how to use them ) Its usually noobs soloing and flanking west where they typically get annihilated by jihad cars.

[Outlawz7]

So what you are saying fuzzhead, is that Insurgents should not be played as a conventional army but at the same time they get shovels and hideouts to build and now you are mentioning RPs as an option for Insurgents so they can stay together a lot easier?

I don't understand the logic behind this as much as I don't understand the logic behind having transport helicopters on a 5 minute spawn whereas ordinary land jeeps have a 10 minute spawn at fbs/bunkers and are very limited in numbers as far as availability at main bases goes.

[Solid Knight]

again, the problem here is in fact lack of spawns as if there was more spawns if the British armour did just rape the mosque / palace, then insurgents could easily spawn at different locations, having a tank or APC sit outside RPG range is very realistic and the insurgents should not be trying to shoot the tanks while they are out there, instead try and luar them in onto there IEDs where they are venerable.

I understand that. My point was, as things are, it is very easy for the British to set up an offensive where the insurgents are completely boned. I agree that the solution would be to offer more spawns. Insurgents should be able to spawn within reasonable distance of any cache. Considered having spawns appear with caches? They don't have to be right on top of the cache but with in reasonable distance of it.

[Zerapup]

LEAVE BASRAH ALONE!!! she has 2 children =()