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I made a post about this somewhere, I believe it was in another thread, but I'm starting to think that more caches would make for better insurgency. Currently, with the usual 1 cache known, the whole server is focused on one cache, so it turns into a stalemate where the superiority of defending drives the weaker attackers to give up and search for unknowns, or just run into the meat grinder around the known cache over and over again, until the round ends.

There have been so many times where only a few insurgents manage hold off a full squad or even multiple blufor squads. That is the fun that keeps me coming back to insurgency, time and time again. Sitting at a cache with 25 other insurgents, killing anyone that even gets within 200m isn't that much fun.

So, why don't we add more caches on the map? It would force the insurgents to split up and play a more defensive game. It wouldn't be 64 people attacking/defending one cache, it would be 32 blufor sticking together and working towards one cache which is being defended by as little as one squad.

More tickets for the insurgents might be needed, but forgetting the overall balance, less insurgents defending the caches seems like it could improve the game mode. And spreading out the insurgents across a larger area will mean a more unforgiving environment for the blufor. Rather than a deserted city, with 32 insurgents on one block, you would take fire from all over the place.

TLDR? More caches! not less.

LOL so i can find them easier? that would literally be regression as it was like this before.

<3 the cache timer idea

No, he's right. There's no room for tactical finesse with 64 people fighting over a one meter long object in the middle of an indestructable city. There's no room to manuver, and no possibility of sucess without bringing overwhelming firepower and numbers to the fight.

In open areas, bluefor will win moderately easily with an abundance of long ranged weapons. In built up areas, their ability to win depends on their ability to form a big enough blob to over run the insurgents before they can respawn.

Also, insurgents already have 'incentive to defend'. Some won't ever defend a static position, and trying to force them to will only make the rest of us miserable.

illidur wrote:LOL so i can find them easier? that would literally be regression as it was like this before.

Who cares if it was like this before? The game didn't suck in the past(not saying it does now), iirc it was changed to reduce the number of networked objects, not because it made for bad game play.

Weather or not you could find them easier would largely depend on how the insurgents played. If it was like the current system where most people ignore unknowns and swam 1 known, sure it'd be easier for blufor to find unknowns. But with a larger number of unknowns I'm betting people would see the need to spread out and defend the whole area.

Also, adding more caches could mean more action takes place in each round. Let's say we up the number from 2 to 5 caches on the map at once. We could simply change the 10 INS ticket loss to 4 tickets per cache, and the overall tickets could remain the same, only the number of caches increase. If your team finds that blufor are running around blowing up the unknowns, you have more time to respond to that and start defending them.

In short, it would be harder for the insurgents to lay down a perfect defense of the objectives, while at the same time making it less punishing to lose one or two objectives. And on the flip side the blufor would have more opportunities to use their superior numbers and firepower to overrun the insurgents defenses.(because the whole team isn't stacked on one cache)

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Edit: Something else that could help is not telling the insurgent team the status of their caches. How would they know which locations the enemy knows about? The blue/purple markers influence player behavior too much in my opinion, a cache is a cache.

more caches = less defense period. its not hard to herd blufor into a 1 cache assault frenzy.

more caches = higher chance i'll randomly find one.

your suggestion of making caches more meaningless will result in less defense and more roaming
it would go from this - YouTube
to this - YouTube

illidur wrote:more caches = less defense period. its not hard to herd blufor into a 1 cache assault frenzy.

more caches = higher chance i'll randomly find one.

your suggestion of making caches more meaningless will result in less defense and more roaming
it would go from this - YouTube
to this - YouTube

More defense on 1 cache = more dead bodies = more intel lost
More defense on known cache = less defense on unknowns

The insurgents can lay down some really good defenses with very few people. If the blufor work together they should gain some advantage.

I don't see how those videos apply to this.

Also, you act like a blufor finding an unknown cache is a game ruining thing. Unknown caches being present makes it so blufor can partrol/search an area and not waste their time. And fake caches are a great way for insurgents to distract & bleed blufors tickets. With more caches, the blufor won't know weather or not there actually is a cache there. Where as now, if there are two caches on their map, they have this magical ability to know.

badmojo420 wrote:Weather or not you could find them easier would largely depend on how the insurgents played. If it was like the current system where most people ignore unknowns and swam 1 known, sure it'd be easier for blufor to find unknowns. But with a larger number of unknowns I'm betting people would see the need to spread out and defend the whole area.

As it stands currently, a badly defended cache is a dead cache. An undefended cache is a dead cache. Its so easy for Blufor to roll over a badly defended cache, ie a cache with minimal defenders. Its also so easy for Blufor to hunt and destroy undefended unknowns, especially if you do it a lot and have a good idea of where the regular cache spawns are (the cache spawn algorithm/whatever is very predictable on a number of maps, hence the supposed "ghosting" problem).

Your suggestion would leave the Ins team with the choice of spreading themselves so thin as to make defending anything an extremely difficult task, or to leave the caches to be hunted and destroyed without a fight. Which is no choice at all.

I would also like to say that I think people have latched onto the "One Cache" part of my suggestion and ignored the rest of it. The other parts were there for a reason.

However, these days I feel like a far simpler, more actionable solution to the Ins problem would be what DiscoJedi suggested (2nd page of this thread); caches spawn when enough intel has been collected. It solves the problem of Blufor exclusively hunting unknowns, which solves the problem of Ins not defending their knowns. It might mean Ins can't set up "fake caches" (although actually I don't see why that would be the case). But if its a choice between a game mode that has teamwork, squad work and objectives that matter and make sense, Vs "tactical finesse", then I know which one I would choose.

I understand your concerns about the insurgents getting rolled over. But, I think we might see the insurgent team adapting and overcoming the situation. In the past we had lots of caches on the map, and the game was still fun & competitive.

I think it was a dev that made a comment years ago that has really stuck with me. He said something along the lines of "insurgent caches are meant to be destroyed". The insurgents aren't meant to keep their caches alive the whole round. The game is about reducing enough of the blufor tickets, while they destroy your caches. In my opinion, if we have a system where the insurgents can regularly hold off the blufor, the gamemode needs tweaking.

The part about people using the cache spawning system to their advantage shouldn't really come up in discussions like this, if people want to simply win at any cost, that's their problem. If we start changing the game to prevent exploits, we're going to end up playing a very dull game. Not to mention, the devs are always making improvements, for all we know it could be a non-existent problem next patch.

Lots of suggestions here... I like it.

With the recent changes DB has testing on a couple of servers, I wanted to see how it affects this conversation. Assuming PR moves forward with these changes, what OTHER changes do you think would add to the fun?

One cache at a time

One suggestion that I've seen a lot of... one cache at a time. I like this change, I think it's for the best. I also think there are some current issues that will need to be addressed to make it work. To support why I like this, you can read a few comments above that stress one common factor: More caches == less defense

Unknowns provide a variety of problems in current gameplay, from people spawning on them and giving them away to blufor running around hitting unknowns instead of assaulting the known cache. Removing them resolves this issue.

Some bad comes along with this. A lot of people complain that there are some caches that are just too tough to crack sometimes. There are several suggestions to address this as well. I think a timed expiration on caches and/or some cache location redesign could address this issue. For the timed expiration I don't agree there should be a blufor penalty because if blufor is assaulting a cache and gets repelled, they have already expended tickets on the assault. I'm worried that penalizing them more than wasted time and tickets may make teams decide to not even try a cache they think will be too hard.

Anyway my hope is that the "one cache at a time" change will consolidate the firefights to a more defined area (creating more intense battles) and make the rounds go a little faster.

Intel

The intel tweaks are interesting changes and I can't comment on them too much until I see them in action but I think this is another area that needs some work. Currently intel points will never go negative. With these changes bringing about the possibility to double the amount of intel needed to reveal a cache, I think we will see more collaborator efforts that are effective.

Martyr 7 collabs while looking for a cache and now you have to kill 145 insurgents (instead of just 75) to get enough intel. This is a huge change that I think most people are overlooking and it may need to be tweaked many times to find the right balance. I like it though, as it seems to add more reason to the intel system. I would love to hear some more suggestions on other things you think could be done with intel points, particularly involving control zones (flags).

Other Stuffs

Not related directly to current changes, but things that might help these changes:

We really need to look at C4 in insurgency. One option I can see would be to move all caches that are located in a building with no cover around the perimeter of said building. This would allow for a "360" security perimeter around the cache building without exposing those defenders to long range, unobstructed fire. Blufor must BREACH the compound in order to get in C4 range of the cache, and it will either be CQB, CAS, or mortars/area attack.

Another option is to remove C4 from insurgency. This might address some other problems with c4 as well, but we would have to be certain to move/remove those "impossible" caches that pretty much require the c4 approach to get to them.

Hrm... that's all I have for now. Let's discuss and see what we can come up with using DBs changes as a baseline.

Alpha.s9 wrote:Some bad comes along with this. A lot of people complain that there are some caches that are just too tough to crack sometimes. There are several suggestions to address this as well. I think a timed expiration on caches and/or some cache location redesign could address this issue.

I don't like the timed expiration idea, I can envision the blufor just on the brink of getting the cache and it expires. Or the blufor decide to sit back and collect intel until it expires, hoping the next one will be easier to assault.

One idea I had to combat this, is to give the blufor a ticket bleed after a set amount of time. Let's say if the cache is still alive an hour after it becomes known, the blufor start to bleed tickets. If they can't get the cache, they should lose the round, not be given another chance. If a cache is deemed impossible to get, it should be reported in the proper thread.

badmojo420 wrote: If they can't get the cache, they should lose the round, not be given another chance. If a cache is deemed impossible to get, it should be reported in the proper thread.

Ya I think the "impossible to get" should be fixed at the cache level, ie moving the cache or changing the map around it in order to make it "possible" again. I don't like chasing after a fix for one or two questionable caches by changing the entire game design.

Throughout changes to the system "rules" I'm sure we will find that some caches are no longer in viable locations, but I feel that these are environmental and can be edited to accommodate the new "rules".

it should be harder to destroy caches. 3-4 incendiary grenades is not enough. it can easily be destroyed by a 2 man unknown hunting squad.

I would say it should take 7-8 incendiary grenades or 2-3 C4s to destroy a cache. you would be able to react before the cache is going down and it would be harder for bluefor to take it out. (I know some caches are VERY hard to destroy), but thats because infantry squads are not working together every squad attack the cache on there own.

Ive seen 3 squads on NwA working together attacking caches and manage to destroy it. But 1 squad is most certain to die if they attack alone on one of the hard caches.
And those squads usually have apc/tank support.

key to victory is fobs and teamwork.

1st find the cache, then destroy, then a flag spawns and needs to be captured and once captured a X on the map marks the location as cleared?

So I played my first round of One Cache Insurgency on PRTA just now. It was interesting, and honestly I didn't see a huge difference from normal Ins:



I will say it seemed like the team confined itself to one (quite large) quadrant of the map, instead of the willy-nilly, anywhere and everywhere approach you see in normal Ins. So that was nice.

It may have been a lacklustre US team, but the cache you can see in the screenshot stood the entire round. It may also have been kind of a difficult cache to get, under the circumstances.

Which brings me to my first point; I think One Cache Ins doesn't work by itself. Imo there would need to be some kind of major overhaul of the game mode/mechanics/level design. Either the timer and intel changes I suggest in the OP initially, maybe a massive tweaking effort on all the cache spawns to make sure there are no super difficult ones, or Something Else. Either way it would probably end up being a lot of work.

(Although all of that is based on one round, so far, so take it with a pinch of salt.)

I've got a solution, mk19 humvees and apache gunships

so that's where your hideout was. I thought it would be there. But yeah, 1 cache was interesting, although kind of difficult if it's in a easily defended area like that.

i have played a few rounds of the test and it seems like a more balanced mode even now.

i believe that insurgency should still have the patrol and unknown hunting it used to have, with unexpected ambushes. it should still be possible with one cache with good INTEL settings. every round i played so far the enemy found out about the cache 5 minutes after the last one went down. even though i was martyring myself. this ruins the time to set up defense and for them to be ambushed. other changes to make it more balanced should happen after this important gameplay element is intact right? using cunning tactics like fake caches/ambushes and a good setup time are my favorite things to do, just as much as hiding in bush spying on that sapper going to reload his mines at the cache

i propose not really a change to the settings for intel though. i have two methods to make it so the intel is a little more linear, yet still a negative to shoot civis (probably supplement it):

1. when a cache gets blown up reduce IP by XX. this one makes sense to me even if the cache was unknown. because if they can kill the cache as an unknown they dont need intel. probably easy as hell to add too.

2. when a cache becomes known make IP max 0 but still able to go negative. (might not be possible or too hard to make) would make it so you can't shoot civis but still dont get intel right after your last assault.

either of the first two should work, and both should complement the current test settings.

3. changes to civis would be making it less linear and probably harder to find the balance but could be the answer.

illidur wrote:
2. when a cache becomes known make IP max 0 but still able to go negative. (might not be possible or too hard to make) would make it so you can't shoot civis but still dont get intel right after your last assault.

If i recall correctly, with the current test settings once a cache goes known the intel points reset to zero. If the max points were set to zero, then you would not get intel for fighting over a known, and once you kill it you would have to start all over for intel points to get the next cache. This might be something worth considering if blufor is able to get all the caches every time.

Current settings allow you to be gaining intel for the next cache while fighting over the known, but without actually having an unknown in play (to avoid multiple problems encountered with unknowns). If you gain enough intel during the fight over the known, as soon as it is destroyed you will go on timer for the next known. Maybe the timer between getting the intel and the cache showing up for blufor should be lowered or removed to compliment this change.

I suspect this is the reason the next cache is always 5 minutes after the first, you are getting enough intel but you still have to wait for the cache to go blue.