Project Reality Forums

Great post. I agree with everything 110%, but feel that the problem with Insurgents lies with more than binoculars and hideouts, but with the philosophy that underpins them. At the moment, they pretty much just are a conventional army with crappy equipment. There is no flavour to them, and the longer spawn times just make playing them boring. At the moment, they are cannon fodder who is forced to play like a conventional force. It's clear from the new maps that have been introduced that the devs intend for it to be this way, but with a terrain advantage. That's just not good enough. Being able to spawn camp the US on Korengal, or having caches that they can't find for **** isn't any fun at all if I'm losing 2/3 of my firefights, and still having a long spawn time. Giving a team a map advantage to counter each individual soldier's inability to fight at all doesn't make for an enjoyable play experience. Pigeon holing the Insurgents into fighting like a normal army not only ignores how a modern Insurgency is fought (from the local population, with angry people to always quickly take up your gun and your place if killed), but makes Insurgents the most frustrating and boring army to play.

Taking universal spawns off the Insurgents would have been just fine if they had have picked up some advantages over their enemies. All they got were Forward Outposts, which the conventional armies already had. Conventional armies also get rally points, so in the end they have a hell of a lot more reinforcability than the Insurgents do, which already defeats half the point of having a mobile Insurgency. At the moment, Insurgents almost feel like a passive faction who is having precision strikes carried out against them. In reality while that is happening, it is the Insurgents who are the aggressors, who aim to bleed out and kill the coalition with ambushes and strikes from everywhere.

Insurgents should stay scattered and largely disorganised - they don't have the organisational capacity of conventional forces (so screw the hideouts and shovels) but they should have perks to make up for it. Bring back the universal spawn points, lower respawn times, rework the Civi/Collaborator class (more fun to play thanks, with added rocks), spawn more Ins sniper kits (which are pretty impotent at the moment anyway), give Ambusher his second IED back, limit the fail AT grenades (more frags and molotovs plox).

Stop trying to force Insurgents to act like a defending semi-conventional Militia. Insurgents are more likely to effectively lone wolf, and to move in small groups, and to use suicide tactics that don't hurt their organisation much at all. Suicide tactics should be viable, and whacky or funny shit encouraged, because let's face it, that's the attraction of insurgency - more stuff is allowed, and more stuff is viable for an Insurgent force.

Truism wrote:Great post. I agree with everything 110%, but feel that the problem with Insurgents lies with more than binoculars and hideouts, but with the philosophy that underpins them. At the moment, they pretty much just are a conventional army with crappy equipment. There is no flavour to them, and the longer spawn times just make playing them boring. At the moment, they are cannon fodder who is forced to play like a conventional force. It's clear from the new maps that have been introduced that the devs intend for it to be this way, but with a terrain advantage. That's just not good enough. Being able to spawn camp the US on Korengal, or having caches that they can't find for **** isn't any fun at all if I'm losing 2/3 of my firefights, and still having a long spawn time. Giving a team a map advantage to counter each individual soldier's inability to fight at all doesn't make for an enjoyable play experience. Pigeon holing the Insurgents into fighting like a normal army not only ignores how a modern Insurgency is fought (from the local population, with angry people to always quickly take up your gun and your place if killed), but makes Insurgents the most frustrating and boring army to play.

Taking universal spawns off the Insurgents would have been just fine if they had have picked up some advantages over their enemies. All they got were Forward Outposts, which the conventional armies already had. Conventional armies also get rally points, so in the end they have a hell of a lot more reinforcability than the Insurgents do, which already defeats half the point of having a mobile Insurgency. At the moment, Insurgents almost feel like a passive faction who is having precision strikes carried out against them. In reality while that is happening, it is the Insurgents who are the aggressors, who aim to bleed out and kill the coalition with ambushes and strikes from everywhere.

Insurgents should stay scattered and largely disorganised - they don't have the organisational capacity of conventional forces (so screw the hideouts and shovels) but they should have perks to make up for it. Bring back the universal spawn points, lower respawn times, rework the Civi/Collaborator class (more fun to play thanks, with added rocks), spawn more Ins sniper kits (which are pretty impotent at the moment anyway), give Ambusher his second IED back, limit the fail AT grenades (more frags and molotovs plox).

Stop trying to force Insurgents to act like a defending semi-conventional Militia. Insurgents are more likely to effectively lone wolf, and to move in small groups, and to use suicide tactics that don't hurt their organisation much at all. Suicide tactics should be viable, and whacky or funny shit encouraged, because let's face it, that's the attraction of insurgency - more stuff is allowed, and more stuff is viable for an Insurgent force.

Exactly. People need (and should've had) to understand this.

Insurgents arn't a well trained force.

They're taught how to do things.
what they need
when to do it
why to do it (for some reason)
and who is going to do it.

other than that, they're pretty much on their own. Collaborators were well thought out in allowing them to call in things, but i believe that what should happen is that the squad leader.. (which should now be more of a chain-command kind of guy, not really a "squad" leader, maybe just a "war" leader or something) should be able to accept calls from collaborators in his squad, and then the commander from the squad leader, if possible.

Really, the insurgents need to be more spread out, less tactical, and more random.

it's quite sad though.. i feel like the insurgents can now stand up to the USMC.. i used to love the imbalance..

heck, i even loved it when the USMC had the A10 on basrah. Them having all these helos and planes, attacking the city, while the insurgents had nothing. It really felt like you were defending and defeating a major conventional force with your bare hands

it's just like the rally-point system. don't really enjoy it as much as i thought people were saying...

i know we need to learn to play differently, but really on insurgency and even a little on militia it's just a bit too much...

Good post Truism, with alot of good points.

When I think about it, the new spawn system really is the main reason to why it has become increasingly boring and frustrating to play as insurgent. Without as many spawn-points as before the team becomes painfully immobile (as if it isn't enough with the lack of proper transport vehicles) as opposed to the enemy (that can drop rallys).

I often find myself having to walk for houndreds of meters from a spawn-point to the area where the enemy/squadmembers are located. This wouldn't really be very annoying or frustrating if it wasn't for the fact that I'm so much easier to kill than anyone playing on the coalition team. Getting killed again and again is part of playing as insurgent, having to walk for houndreds of meters to get back to where you were shouldn't be.

Good thing about the old insurgent spawn system was that it always felt like there were more insurgents than conventional troops in every major firefight. Not necesarrily because the insurgent player were many more than the ones fighting them but because they fast could spawn in close to the hot area and continue the fighting after they had been killed.
Not only is this more fun and, as I understand it, closer to how these fights generally looks like IRL (with lots of insurgents moving in from every side of you) but also added to the balance. Many insurgents vs. few but well-equiped conventional fighters is a well-balanced solution that is fun for both sides.

Right now it's different. When an insurgentsp layer dies in a firefight he has to spawn on the nearest hideout/cave/whatever and then walk all the way back to where he were when he got killed. The US/British players gets time to breath, change mags and have a cup of tea while he slowly makes it to their position... This is a kind of nightmare scenario that happens all to often on 0.8., making firefights on insurgent maps all to frustrating for the insurgents and all to easy for the coalition forces.

Please bring back insurgents to what they were in 0.75.! I see how the devs want to promote teamplay with the hideout-system and I appreciate it, but it is currently mainly (I say "mainly" because I have few but good experiences of organized squads using them in the proper way) causing problems for the insurgents, making the insurgency gameplay slower and more boring for both teams.

This reminds me, I was watching black hawk down yesterday (quick, run!), one of my favourite films of all time.

But I also watched the film with the comentary by some of the soldiers who were out there.

It was very interesting and is something like I would love the insurgents to be.

Apparently hundreds of RPGs were fired into the sky, not a few. Also, 5 BH were hit in total, although only 2 were major crashes.

To sum it up, the US forces have lots of airpower considering whats in PR at the moment (gunship littlebirds) and thats forgetting the apaches being used now in where ever it is. The US weren´t overpowered though. They killed alot more enemy, but there was alot more of the enemy.

I think in PR the insurgents maps could do with having more firepower and assets for conventional forces and more spawns, lower spawn times and more weapons for the insurgents to simulate higher numbers.

I actually don't play tactical when I'm an Insurgent - I walk around with my AK on full auto, I shoot at Coalition forces and then run away, etc.
I just said about the Devs making the Insurgents be tactical because that's general that I gather they want.

Agreed to the Above. Insurgents having a shorter spawn time in previous versions really helped the feel of the map. I can remember all those times we had insurgents spawning around me in .75, And me and my squad were just picking them off one by one. God that was fun.

If ambushers had more than one IED, that'd be nice.

Even with the added equipment, I find the insurgency part fun if the insurgents play like insurgents. I had a great game on Korengal Valley (pardon any spelling mistakes) the other day because our team really played it out like insurgents. IED's hidden in the bushes, molotov ambushes, sneaking around the high grass. I haven't been around long enough to know about the changes over the different patches, but my only problem with insurgents might be iron sights, but I hate all iron sights in the game (expect the UK ones, which are huge). Simply put, too small, block too much of my vision, makes targets harder to see. Even a slight zoom would be nice, to make up for the crappy sighting effects.

Some points: the whole "command" hierarchy just doesn't fit in with insurgents IRL IMO. For conventional forces sure but not insurgents. Insurgents shouldn't have a commander. I know bf2 engine probably doesn't give a choice but maybe there's a workaround.

Some other things which don't really help the situation IMO are the terrible accuracy of the AK now. I mean is it really that terrible IRL on full auto. Maybe I just haven't got the hang of it yet but I've lost count how many times I've opened up full auto sub 15 feet and lost terribly. I fire a whole clip and fail to kill they fire a few rounds and I'm done. I thought an AK in CQB should be something you don't want to come across but in game it's more of an annoyance to the opfor. Another thing which I've mentioned before is insurgents should be slightly faster & more agile than conventional forces IMO since they are carrying far less gear + they are wearing athletic shoes. Less stamina & endurance than well conditioned forces? Yes, but faster.

Defiyur wrote:Some points: the whole "command" hierarchy just doesn't fit in with insurgents IRL IMO. Squad leaders? Commanders? for conventional forces sure but not insurgents. I know bf2 engine probably doesn't give a choice but maybe there's a workaround.

Some other things which don't really help the situation IMO are the terrible accuracy of the AK now. I mean is it really that terrible IRL on full auto. Maybe I just haven't got the hang of it yet but I've lost count how many times I've opened up full auto sub 15 feet and lost terribly. I fire a whole clip and fail to kill they fire a few rounds and I'm done. I thought an AK in CQB should be something you don't want to come across but in game it's more of an annoyance to the opfor. Another thing which I've mentioned before is insurgents should be slightly faster & more agile than conventional forces IMO since they are carrying far less gear + they are wearing athletic shoes. Less stamina & endurance than well conditioned forces? Yes, but faster.

back in the old versions though, it wasn't really thought of as a commander or squad leader

squad leader would be like our boss, who would tell us of our sinister plan to go attack the USMC/Brits, and the commander was the bosses boss, who told him to tell us to attack the usmc/brits

Very very easy concept.

The higher level people have just as much of a tactical nature as conventional armies, but they know that their soldiers will do ANYTHING to defend/attack their enemies. including explode.

So really, in all reality, insurgents are a tactical militia on ecstasy

Maybe you are right but something just doesn't feel right about insurgents IMO. I tend to view insurgents as more of a loose federation of like minded people with same or similar goals who don't necessarily take, receive or need orders from some higher ups. Maybe they have "spiritual" commanders (AKA the local cleric) but this structured comm>SL> doesn't suit them IMO. If they were hezbollah it would be different since they are much more well organized & equipped. I don't know...

When I can take caches completely unopposed because it takes too long for insurgents to get there then you know something is wrong. I agree, the insurgents should have more universal spawn points and ditch the hideouts for their side altogether. The aim is to simulate the fact that an insurgent can be anyone and can come from anywhere. They're supposed to be able to swarm on enemy positions.

I wonder what the dev's think?

Solid Knight wrote:When I can take caches completely unopposed because it takes too long for insurgents to get there then you know something is wrong. I agree, the insurgents should have more universal spawn points and ditch the hideouts for their side altogether. The aim is to simulate the fact that an insurgent can be anyone and can come from anywhere. They're supposed to be able to swarm on enemy positions.

Yep. It's like you are in a constant race to get to caches before the opfor does. When the other team has helos & hummers to get them there quick the insurgents lose that race many times unless there happen to be an especially teamwork oriented player who picks people up in a car or technical (RARE).

Then in anticipation of the coming raid you try to build a hideout but since every body is across the map it withers on the vine and you end up spectating your caches demise because you are only one fighter to combat insurmountable # of the opfor. I keep coming down to this thought: Why didn't they PREPARE better!? It's like the insurgents just arrived on the same day as the opfor and has to overcome all the same tactical barriers the opfor does only with LESS capable means.

Is it possible to make a mapper placed vehicle that has multiple entry points across the map and multiple exit points?

Hmm, so you get in it in position 1 at A3, switch to position 4 and exit at A8...would be interesting, but can a vehicle be a) made of multiple unconnected pieces and/or b) be 'under' the map...

Harrod200 wrote:Hmm, so you get in it in position 1 at A3, switch to position 4 and exit at A8...would be interesting, but can a vehicle be a) made of multiple unconnected pieces and/or b) be 'under' the map...

Exactly so.

So what do the dev's have to say?

Tirak wrote:Is it possible to make a mapper placed vehicle that has multiple entry points across the map and multiple exit points?

Kinda like the Tunnels in BFV?

So, are you basically suggesting an automatic transporter?
Sounds really sketchy to me, but maybe if you made there be a delay between the entrance and exit, that might make it ok. I could do it, it wouldn't be hard. In fact it'd be downright easy, excluding the part about what to model the entrance/exit area like (a hole?).

I figured some kind of basement doorway.