Commander

[PLODDITHANLEY]

I'm loving the changes to CO role:

With the UAV permanent and quick you've always got something to do, was having fun guiding armour onto enemy targets on Muttrah - no reverse turn left then right to come up behind him.

The new quick markers mean intel is accurate and quickly displayed with of course the ability to remove markers very quickly to keep the map clean so players don't ignore it.

Only slight thing that wasn't perfect was that markers seemed to vanish more quickly so for example an enemy FOB that we didn't attack I seemed to be having to replace the marker very often.

There is potential however for people to massively spam markers, but for me who tries to do a good job I loved it.

[dbzao]

I played several rounds with COs and like you said, it was pretty good.

They were communicating, putting markers when we would just report stuff over mumble, marking targets that they saw with the UAV so we could notice and react in time, etc.

Here's an example of the difference of a team using a commander and a team not using a commander:

We were defending a position with a TOW and an AA and it was quiet for a while. The enemy first rushed right in with a logi truck that got destroyed pretty easily by the TOW and a Jeep .50 cal. Then they sent two helicopters right in as well, that got killed instantly by our AA (check the video here). The whole time I'm thinking, why didn't they ask their commander for recon by UAV. They would clearly see the emplacements and be able to react to it. When we finally went on the offensive, I asked the commander for recon, and he reported the two enemy tanks and TOW emplacement so we didn't rush in, we got eyes on them and called in the cavalry. So good.

[cyberzomby]

Tried it yesterday for a short while (mumble was not working, so typing out what I wanted from them was hard ) but was surprised the UAV lasted for ever. Its a good thing as you both have pointed out. Gives you something to do.

On the other hand, It kept me wondering how it would play out if both CO's have a UAV up. They'd just guide the troops to one another and watching the fight develop. I was commanding INS and it made it a lot easier for our team (if we had comms that is).

I could easily tell them in what building the cache was. Making it almost ghosting in my oppinion. Hide-outs where spotted and marked easily so in theory I could have send a squad in to cut off the reinforcements. Keeping a look out on the cache building until there was no one around it and send in the C4!

So on one side its good, but on another, I'm not sure yet

[Stealth Clobber]

I usually never go commander, but after trying it out a few times in 1.0, it's one of my go-to roles now. I was commanding British on Al Basrah a few hours ago, and had one of my best moments. We had only one cache left to take out, right after the 4th cache went down I sent my UAV over to the village on the western side of the map, with all the fields around. It was far away from the other cache and I figured, might as well check it out!

Right as soon as I get there, I spotted the cache. Summarily guided the mortars in, and the rest is history.

UAV is also very useful with CAS (when they are cooperative). It's incredibly satisfying to laze enemy armor and watch the missile blow it up from the sky.

[Jafar Ironclad]

Would you guys say commander UAV feels too effective at the moment with permanent up-time?

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Yes and no.

Very effective at marking stuff quickly and accurately.

No because squads are rarely available to react instantaniously, where I found it seems perhaps OP is when I was talking to a decent pilot watching a tank, we tried like five times with dumb bombs with the laze serving as a finite marker for the pilot. We got the tank after five goes but the enemy team did get his shit together and shoot him down after so many runs.
But was able to despatch a helicopter for SAR which was there before he hit the ground, unfortunately he forgot to drop his pilot kit and died though lol.

Earlier today I directed a 2 tank squad onto an enemy APC which was killed very quick.

Overall I don't think it's OP as friendly forces have so much to do they aren't free to react to CO s spots. Although now with less HATS and less FOBs therfor TOWs a UAV guided decent pair of tanks could be a pretty unstoppable force as a deployed TOW is easy to spot, so the only threat which is hard to spot is the ONE HAT kit and mines which are pretty rare on big maps.

The possibility of surrounding a cache with waypoints as an early warning proved very useful too.

For the moment wait and see, in a rare combo it can be devastating but I don't think that'll happen that often.

[40mmrain]

Would you guys say commander UAV feels too effective at the moment with permanent up-time?

TO be honest, I do. Lazing form the UAV and do quick max range strikes with LGBs or ASMs seems to be impossible to defend against. It's impossible to hide anything at all. Being able to shoot down UAVs or see them in the sky would be nice. Maybe a bit of a debuff.

Put UAV up -> spot fobs near flag, laze enemy armour and emplacements -> send QRF with c4 to destroy the FOB, mortars for emplacements, and fast CAS for the armour -> easily defend or cap flag now that reinforcements are cut off

If the UAV could be sighted at all, or shot down, then you could stop lazes, and know it's coming. You could do the same tactic I describe with helicopters, recon armour or inf, but that takes time, and it can be stopped. The uav is instant and can not be defended against.

[PLODDITHANLEY]

That might not be a bad idea... Put the UAV in a dangerous place gets shot down then 10 minute respawn.

Funny as on muttrah the enemy cobra was so close I started expecting a collision.

[L4gi]

It seems to me that the uav lase has a hard time sticking to vehicles, which imo makes it "balanced". Has this happen to me quite a few times on Saaremaa saturday night: id lase a stationary btr, the lase would stay on the vehicle but once it started moving the lase just stayed where I initially put it.

[cyberzomby]

didnt even know it could laze

On the topic of overpoweredness. I have yet to try a few games with Mumble as CO and I will try to do them this week.

But the short bit I played, for me, the true overpoweredness comes in insurgency. I mean, when you switch sides and tell other people the cache locations its ghosting. The permanent UAV basically can do the same. I've circled around 3 different cache markers and could spot the cache on the ground in an instance. So if you have a CO you no longer have to go house to house. You just know where it is. So maybe make the UAV timed on ins. maps to make it a bit more balanced is my gut feel.

But for the rest, we'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I'll report my findings when I have played some full rounds as CO.

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Press 2 to.switch to thermals then LMB to laze.

[Tarranauha200]

It just needs longer redeploy time.

[ChallengerCC]

Would you guys say commander UAV feels too effective at the moment with permanent up-time?

In combination with coordinated mortars(intel) and cas(laser,intel) yes, otherwise no.
The laser should have a batteries power down time and the mortars should need more time to aim or reload.
(This problem only exists in coordinated battles not pub stile)

To disable the UAV a certain time is not a good idea because the Commander is not so attractive and maybe "boring" then.

[notmyingamename]

Would you guys say commander UAV feels too effective at the moment with permanent up-time?

honestly, yes. there is no downside.

i want you guys to keep it as is, however. i've ran commander for 5 or 6 full rounds since 1.0 and i don't know how many prior. the new system is wonderful. it's available to both sides to use if they choose to. it requires coordination to make direct use of lazes and mortar targets. it lets us talk directly to single squads or assets and monitor their situations in real-time. modern reconnaissance platforms serve all these same functions. it's realistic, and it does exactly what it's supposed to. please keep it as is.

instead of toning it down, maybe you should build around it.
-if your team has a commander, then show the enemy UAV on the map to reflect a radar target orbiting the area.
-revert to the physical UAV. give it an actionable vulnerability. force the commander to probe an area before going all in over a fob with AA assets. give it a downtime once lost.
-make a deployable jammer. electronic warfare module. interupt the video feed intermittently for moments at a time to reflect frequency hopping.
-make it an actual uav that requires a pilot to operate and coordinate with the commander directly. let the commander view the feed from his station.

don't tone it down. keep up the progress! not all of those might be easy to implement, but the new UAV is too good to kick in the balls right out of the gate. it's a great team asset and it brings the commander into the game in a realistic way.

[Spook]

I am not sure. On the one hand I love the new UAV. I played tons of rounds as CO in 0.98 and always had the problem of never being able to use the UAV when I actually needed it. You deploy it and then a shit load of other stuff needs to be done. And then when you finally want to take a look at it to observe an enemy objective or laze something for CAS, it is already gone. + You have the stress of knowing that the UAV will be gone soon, making the job much harder. When I played yesterday on our GamingDay as CO it was really relaxing. I knew I had my UAV available all the time and could use it whenever I needed it. it was awesome.

I was able to observe my INF squads and kept telling them where the enemy was sitting or from where the enemy was approaching their position. I gave a lot of intel to our vehicles and saved their asses a lot of times.

Since the CAS got nerfed alot in 1.0, I do not think the UAV is OP. In 0.98 it would have been...but not now.

Usually in 0.98, when UAV was up and our CAS aswell (which does not happen that often, because either the CAS gets shot down just when my UAV goes online or my UAV goes offline right when the CAS spawns again...) ... yeah, it usually ended really bad for the enemy.

But yesterday there were only one or 2 successful attacks on the enemy. Either they did not hit shit because they are still not used to the very low splash damage of the hellfires, or they got shot down very fast because they are still not familiar with the new flight handlings. It just needs time for everyone to get used to it and we will see how it will work out with very experienced pilots.

Just keep it as it is right now I would say.

[Strepto]

I have played around five rounds as the commander in 1.0, and I have some feedback for the role. I have some experience from the earlier versions. The role has never been attractive because of the slow markers/flow of information and the fairly large UAV downtime - witch led to extremely low flow of information to the commander.

Here is my feedback as of v1.0.31:

The new feature with 5 sec markers is a needed and much appreciated change.

The UAV is now really useful with the invisible soldiers bug removed. The change with no downtime on the UAV is nice too. I do not think an arbitrary "Refuel time" should be reintroduced.

The all-seeing eye in the skies will need to have reduced efficiency.

Changes i propose:

1. Remove the "Spotted" on the Q menu for the commander entirely. It reduces the effort for the commander to find the accurate location of enemy squads and FOBs. (Currently: Just press "spotted" beside the actual target and a ?" will mark the spot on the map. Adjust the marker accordingly).
2. "Q"-Spotting of air assets is not something the commander should be able to do accurately, and this communication should be done via VOIP/Mumble. (Currently the commander can spot air assets the vanilla BF2 way while in the UAV, with an accurate icon following the air asset for X seconds.)
3. I would like to have a longer UAV redeploy time, ~45 sec. As of now I can easily follow air assets/trans choppers around the map with the fast redeploy and I have no penalty for moving around. Offensive/defensive placement of the UAV should be a choice, but not a decision that will take too long to change.
4. An initial 5 minute delay of entering the UAV at the start of the game, to limit the ability to see every initial plan of the enemy team. Currently at the start of a round a fast offensive/hidden FOB is almost impossible to do effectively if the enemy team has a competent commander. As the commander can follow the transport chopper/truck from the main base. Every early FOB is easy to spot, and a commanded four man squad with some C4 can often easily take out all the "fallback" FOBs. Effectively ending the game once the front line is broken.

I have not yet decided on the UAV Laze. The pluses: It is useful and fun. Its impossible to hit moving targets. It requires vocal communication with the CAS. Negatives: It is not possible for the opposing armor/infantry to counter the laze, because its coming from an invincible entity in the skies. Lazes is

PS: This feedback is for AAS commanding and UAV only, as I have not commandeered insurgency

[dbzao]

An idea that has been brought up before is attaching the availability of the UAV to an X number of FOs built. So it's something that is good for the team in general and you get the bonus of the UAV. A little unrealistic, but you get "specops" squads that can interrupt the enemy UAV by going around demolishing enemy FOs, and logistics squads that should worry about keeping the FOs up and secure to get the UAV for the commander.

Honestly, I think it's "balanced" for the conventional forces in AAS as both teams have it and can use it. Insurgency and other militia forces it's a little tough, but I don't have any ideas about that, yet.

[Kevokpo]

what about making a destroyable static, just like vBF2? don't know where it should be placed, but insurgents can to destroy it to prevent bluefor from using the UAV, and bluefor can then repair it to use it, it is not very realistic as it would have to be outside of the main base.

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Without mortars available on the 2km maps renders the UAV with just a an observation role, I was CO on Al Basrah and because of the lack of mortars and the density of action with 100p means no squads had the freedom to do anything else other than survive.

I was SL on Beirut as IDF and again no mortars or CAS coupled with dense urban combat made it fairly powerless.

On All Basrah the lack of mortars was really felt.

[Strepto]

Without mortars available on the 2km maps renders the UAV with just a an observation role, I was CO on Al Basrah and because of the lack of mortars and the density of action with 100p means no squads had the freedom to do anything else other than survive.

I was SL on Beirut as IDF and again no mortars or CAS coupled with dense urban combat made it fairly powerless.

On All Basrah the lack of mortars was really felt.

The mortars are disabled on the maps smaller then 2048x2048. You could use mortars on the maps you mentioned.