Project Reality Forums

Aren't the mortars overpowered mostly because of the UAV, which can be repositioned constantly? Why not just nerf the UAV and leave the mortars as they are? Getting a precise coordinate and simply clicking page up to accept it is definitely lame and makes commanding and operating the mortars pretty boring. But actually employing spotters and using squad chat to get enemy positions (like what the insurgents have to do) makes for very rewarding teamwork and also makes the mortars less effective in a good way. Also, on maps like Kokan and Basrah mortars are often the only way insurgents can hit fortified blufor positions. That's why I'd hate to see the mortars go from most maps - I think it's mostly the UAV that makes them overpowered and boring to command/operate. Couldn't we just increase the recharge time for the UAV and see if that improves gameplay instead of making drastic changes like removing mortars from most maps?

Murphy what you said is still not commanding. Commanding usually takes up all your time and leaves non for spotting. You are looking at the map and you are constantly keeping track of squads movement and condition. You have to move squads around the whole time receive contact reports, mark them on the map and forward them to other squads if relevant for them. You have to coordinate transport, logistics, FOB positions. The most time consuming part is the preparation for an assault. It usually takes 10-15min of constant talking and moving people from place to place and briefing SL's until every Squad and every asset is ready for an inter-squad combined assault. Same goes for building up defences and making squads retreat, keeping track of them and keep kicking their asses if they are falling back to slow for whatever reason. Stuff like that. PR gameplay is very fast paced and mobility of squads is therefore very slow since always something happens just when everyone was about to be ready. Situations change so fast and all this needs commanders attentions throughout the whole round to keep the team together.

But then there is also the UAV part. Where you can spot for CAS, Mortars and your ground vehicles. 2 different things which CANNOT be done effectively at the same time. You either have to completely focus on the UAV and spot any AA's and other dangers, then constantly talk to CAS and let them get them into a good position and finally place a laze when they are ready to engage. Just a single CAS attack requires around 2-3 minutes of ignoring your commanding tasks and properly spot and laze for the CAS. Now repeat this a couple of time until your CAS dies and you will be busy for at least 15-20 minutes. Same goes for mortars, when you are searching targets for mortars you have to keep on talking to them making it first of all impossible to keep track of the other squads and making you prioritize comms for the mortars and either rejecting or keeping comm exchanges with other squads as short as possible.

I have never micro-managed any squad, the most detailed order I would give a squad is to maybe move fireteam XYZ over there and the other one there and still I would be busy throughout the whole round without touching the UAV once. I would command much better on maps with no or bad UAV like militia where it not even worth using it or Vietnam. You notice that immediately, I remember back when the UAV was limited I infact always cursed when I placed UAV somewhere, and suddenly realize that 20minutes already passed and I did not even take a single look through it and would have to wait another 10min until I could place it again. Your are simply fully strechted with other more important things and anything that goes beyond casually looking around in the UAV while commanding is completely distracting you from a commanders main task in an organized battle. Spotting is just a sub-branch of a CO's duties. Back in no UAV days I was mainly doing Recon on weekly organized battles and was just running around the map 24/7 marking every shit I saw and heard and lazing anything I could find. CAS and my unit would end up killing atleast 10-20 vehicles + FOB positions per battle simply because the CO could not do it and a dedicated spotter is far more useful than a CO in his UAV could ever be IF he is actually commanding and not just spotting aswell!

Its 2 different things. A guys who is sitting in the UAV and keeping squads up-to-date about the enemy is are BIG help, but its not commanding if he is not actually having control of them.

Public rounds are better played with a spotter instead of a commander anyways. Commanding in public rounds is usually ineffective, its much better to let the SL's organize themselves and provide them with intel. You will never get all squads to listen to you on a public round. Actual commanding only works on organized events and battles where every squad is structured and has an own objective or specialisation which is decided beforehand.

The only times I remember CO's on public rounds was pre 1.0. The game was slower and the community more active, back then it was still kind of manageable, but now the game got too fast and the amount of people willing to play an organized match on a public server dropped alot. Mindset on a public server is more casual nowadays.

Spook wrote: Its 2 different things. A guys who is sitting in the UAV and keeping squads up-to-date about the enemy is are BIG help, but its not commanding if he is not actually having control of them.

Never agreed more.

Only times you will be able to command the squads.... is on an event. But most times in pub matches, it's commander half commanding the asset squads.

I consider the commander a wasted spot a lot of times, since they a lot of times sit in there and spot and jerk

Spook wrote:The only times I remember CO's on public rounds was pre 1.0. The game was slower and the community more active, back then it was still kind of manageable, but now the game got too fast and the amount of people willing to play an organized match on a public server dropped alot. Mindset on a public server is more casual nowadays.

Just depends on the SLs. I command from time to time (and tell people to go screw themselves when they complain about me not spotting that XYZ where they're moving) and for the most part the infantry squads are more than willing to follow orders, or at least we have a dialogue about why they will or won't do what I think they should.

Sorry if the European gameplay experience has dropped as such. Decent commanders are about as rare as good squad leaders, so you can't have them every game unfortunately.

[R-CON]Psyrus wrote:Just depends on the SLs. I command from time to time (and tell people to go screw themselves when they complain about me not spotting that XYZ where they're moving) and for the most part the infantry squads are more than willing to follow orders, or at least we have a dialogue about why they will or won't do what I think they should.

Sorry if the European gameplay experience has dropped as such. Decent commanders are about as rare as good squad leaders, so you can't have them every game unfortunately.

I reckon this isn't a problem exclusive to us but rather the reality of how broken the UAV is. In most instances you can win by just constantly relocating and baby sitting your most powerful asset to perfection, and it'll yield much better results than actually trying to order your troops around, coordinating assaults and so on.

Murphy wrote: Remove mortars because they are OP and can reliable hit anywhere within 1500 meters in a moments notice. Don't remove the UAV, it's one of the only reasons anyone takes a team leadership role anymore.

I think mortars are still one of the only ways to successfully assault a fortified position or a cache that's deep inside a city block. A barrage prior to the assault to keep people's heads down, and smoke to cover movement is usually the only way to advance.

What about giving mortar support to the commander instead, like the artillery barrage? It would do less damage in a smaller area but reload a bit faster. Smoke barrage also available. It would have to be requested by a squadleader using the radio (just like normal artillery) so it wouldn't be as easy to use as the manual mortars we currently have, since it would require direct sight on the target. Commander (using UAV godmode) will no longer be able to spot targets for mortars without infantry in the area requesting the fire mission. Then obviously remove the player operated mortars we currently have.

Frontliner wrote:All the UAV needs to see is where the counters to your CAS or Tanks are. Doesn't matter where the hostile INF goes, if you've managed to deny the opponents AT/AA-capabilities they're bound to lose their held ground sooner or later, and the emplacements on FOBs aren't exactly cutting it since they can be dealt with your infantry and are defensive rather than aggressive.

You obviously don't play armor, lol. I'm not sure you play any assets at all, I might be wrong but if you do your view of how things work is rather off base. I am 100% sure you waste assets like it's going out of style if you believe this statement to be at all true.

Please tell me more of how the UAV destroys all the AA/AT emplacements just by simply orbiting around. You need to base these comments on how stuff actually plays in game not some fabricated scenario that rarely happens. I would also like to know how having a UAV in an area can eliminate MANPADs or LAT/HAT kits, since your scenario is packaged to nicely why not put a bow on it?

Find more water to tread, the UAV is OP in situations but it's only really OP if the commander is DOING HIS JOB DIRECTING TRAFFIC. Take the UAV completely and that role will be empty every round again, am I the only one that loathed rounds with out a Commander? Has everyone forgotten past versions in which no one went commander except to delete a useless FOB 2 flags back? I guess people like Frontliner would prefer to have the leader role left void so only certain squad leaders who know each other are ever likely to coordinate. There are dozens of games where people run around like headless chickens trying to spam as many grenade kills as they can before the round ends, maybe you should take a look into spending some time in a game where you don't have or need someone telling you what is best for the team.

I truly and deeply believe that is an issue many people have with the Commander role, they just don't want to listen or work with him. I mostly see this caused by arrogance and the whole "elitist" attitude.

Murphy wrote:You obviously don't play armor, lol. I'm not sure you play any assets at all, I might be wrong but if you do your view of how things work is rather off base. I am 100% sure you waste assets like it's going out of style if you believe this statement to be at all true.

Don't get personal, I'm tired of bitchiness.
You could have made your argument entirely without it.

Gameplay wise the UAV makes the game worse. The most fun comes from actutal Infantry spotting for u or relaying information when u are driving a vehicle. Because u interact with everyone. From the Grunt writing in Sidechat to the SL yelling in Mumble.

With the UAV this gets cut by 1 Guy spotting everything in realtime with his thermals accuratly from above. Compared, complete boredom.

P.S. Its good the lase is gone, did make it unplayable for vehicles on CAS Maps.

P.P.S. Tactical Gameplay(Infantry) needs some Time, since 1.0 the best Tactic in almost any situation is to run nonstop until u see someone and shoot. I dont get why u didnt do small steps towards acarde.

Murphy, look, it's nice that you like to go all personal on me and stuff but most of what you wrote I did already cover and I explained my point of view and how I arrive to said point of view. I do not feel like scimming through my posts to give you the answers - the last time I did that you flat out ignored that and continued onward as if I haven't already made a case about it.

The next time you present yourself with such a condescending attitude towards me I'll just block you since it's really not worth my time talking to a wall, and an impolite one on top of it.

Seriously why does everybody who has an opposing to you have to be a bad guy, Murphy? Can't we just talk about the game.

I agree with every single argument on UAV removing.

Summing up:
- It is unfair since it cannot be shot down.
- It is distracting as it requires the CO to constantly operate it if he wants to take max advantage of its super powers.
- It is boring because there is no skill involved in deploying an all seeing eye up in the sky wich has nothing to fear about mortality issues.

A conclusion:
Recon choppers would be a far more interesting replacement.

himond wrote:I agree with every single argument on UAV removing.

Summing up:
- It is unfair since it cannot be shot down.
- It is distracting as it requires the CO to constantly operate it if he wants to take max advantage of its super powers.
- It is boring because there is no skill involved in deploying an all seeing eye up in the sky wich has nothing to fear about mortality issues.

A conclusion:
Recon choppers would be a far more interesting replacement.

I agree with the points you made and that's a really interested idea about the recon choppers. Drones that can be shot down would be another option. Though I think the easiest and least time-consuming solution to implement would be to make the UAV recharge every 15-20 minutes or so, forcing the commander to spend more actually commanding and making him think carefully about where to deploy the UAV.

@ Spook
I play a lot as commander in PR, and I do spot and command on the same time,
nothing difficult on that,in fact, specially with the help of the UAV I can command better.

I agree on the removal / limiting UAV capability on Insurgent maps,

- Cache is easy found, ( faster than the Insurgents setting up a proper defense )
- Bomcars or gary's have no chance ( most of the time )
- Firebase's are easily found, and not able to spawn on the cache its GG

I agree on removal / limiting the UAV on ''2 KM maps''

Both teams on this kind of small maps have to rush, ambush, flank or counter attack the enemy team to gain control, if the teams go head to head, the battle will take ages, as both teams will sit on their side (example qwai)
And with the enemy UAV in the sky, it will most defiantly limiting your success to rush, ambush, flank or counter attack.
removal or limiting the UAV will bring back to ''OLD'' recon squads, that could spot only a small side of the map for example mortars, so the are no "OP"

I do not agree on Removal but maybe limiting UAV capability on ''4 KM maps ''

Both teams got fully equipped forces, every thing to counter each other.


As the Ideas on Recon helicopter or destroyable UAV will not work.

- Recon helicopter will be shot down easily if it stays a bit long over the battlefield, specially when it needs have altitude to be able to spot.

- Destroyable UAV will be a sitting duck against the most Feared AA, named HAT. it simply moves to slow and its to easy to hit.

Don't know if this work but maybe deploy the UAV on a higher altitude, that will limiting the view and when when redeploying you have to wait x min.

Dogmaster

Here is an idea, what if it costs tickets to deploy a UAV, this would first prevent a major modeling task for the devs, but also make the commander less UAV happy. I think the UAV should be a low amount of tickets(around 5), but still enough to make a difference if he uses it too much. To prevent any confusion there should be a note next to the UAV symbol stating that it costs x amount of tickets. Also possibly the commander can still relocate the UAV but it only last about 20-30 minutes.'

However if it was my choice I would leave it the same

himond wrote: A conclusion:
Recon choppers would be a far more interesting replacement.

That already exists. But it is useless, case and point did you even know Huey's can laze? And aside from the Huey's you can use and helo anytime for recon.

I would say keep the UAV unchanged, for several reasons.

1. It is used >50% of the time
2. It can't laze anymore
3. Heavily wooded maps are good to hide anything that is ambient temperature (FOBS/hidouts)
4. It cannot directly influence a game. True mortars can hit spotted targets, but they can do that anyway if people bothered to actually give targets, and if the insurgent team is smart they can attack the mortars, or rebuild/replace fobs in good spots that are covered from the aerial view.
5. It is the only incentive to have a commander, other than for 30secs every 40mins

If a commander is commanding only because of the UAV he probably shouldn't be commanding.

Maybe have a time limit on how many minutes you use it for, like 30 minutes and then having a 'resting period' of 10 minutes before you can use it again. That can simulate UAV coming back for refuel.

And prevent the number of times you can summon a UAV on a map, like maybe 5 times per round?

5 x 30 = 02:10, which is roughly the time of a round

One could just try to outright disable UAV altogether on a test server and see how gameplay goes, especially for Insurgency.

Thats exactly how it was before. 20min airtime, 10 minutes refuel time.

Sorry if calling you out on bullshit offends you, actually I'm not. Please feel free to assume I ignore/read your comments in a whimsical fashion, I'm not here to impress anyone. Just trying to inject some logic into the more baseless arguments (I still love how a UAV has an impact on dealing with infantry who can swap kits and positions in a moments notice).