Rallies

[Bluedrake42]

I really like the new rally system
Combined with the limited give-up system it really works\
I really think this is the best compromise I've seen

[ChallengerCC]

I dont think so and i dont like it at all!

Pictures say more than thousand words:

I really like the new rally system
Combined with the limited give-up system it really works\
I really think this is the best compromise I've seen

By the way:
The limited give-up system has the exact same time as before, except you can still revive.
A nice counter/combination against the new everywhere is a spawn point change, looks for me other.

[rodrigoma]

your point?

[Hurricane]

It really is much better than in 1.0 BETA but still, I'd prefer the 0.9x Rally system over this.

[rPoXoTauJIo]

Rally points. Stealing job from logistics squads, transport squads, they making APC's even more useless as transport!

Also, after all rallys gone\overrunned - you'll get a lot of angry ppl on base. Everyone blaming everyone for no transport\fob's\apc's, that's not how PR should be played.

[KiloJules]

As it seems people haven't adapted to the change yet.

Me, personally, I will still build a FOB and often only place my rally when SMs remember me about it.
On the other hand I see many "well, we got a rally, no need for a FOB SLs" which indeed lead to what rPoxo said above me. People need to learn to build FOBs as a backup and then use the rally points as an alternate spawn point once closer to the objective. This way, when the rally gets overrun, they still have their FOBs a bit behind to spawn on.

[Spook]

your point?

His point is that the area around the objective is plastered with Rallypoints and FOBs. How are the Brits even supposed to get close to the objective? Even if they kill the whole team, it will rush back within 1 minute with its full man power. How can this be good. The militia is basically in front of the enemy main.

An important thing you have to consider in a real war are supply lines. The further you get from your base, the further the supply lines get to the frontline and therefore the harder it is to hold that line or even push further. It was similar to this before in PR. FOBs where easily destroyed. It would have taken the enemy team a long time to reorganize and push the enemy back to the lost objective again. They would need to bring supplies, build a FOB and transport troops to the front without getting shot down.

All of this is basically gone now.

[Mats391]

The RP changes go into the right direction and fix some of the problems pointed out during the beta, but leave others untouched.
Fixed problems:
-FOBs are more important again
Unfixed problems:
-lowered value of life due to closer respawn
-easter egg hunting
-radar system

This is what i experienced:
1. "Flag spawning"
Now flags keep your RPs powered and bring back flag spawning. The main issue here is the increased easter egg hunt required to take control of an enemy flag. Not only do you have to find the enemy and his FOBs you also have to find 3 bags full of magic.
Moreover it makes it easier (too easy) to reenfore a defense. Some of your men died? No problem, they will be right back with you attacking the enemy from behind.
Another problem is the radar function of RPs. If you are defending a flag that is well saturated with FOBs, so you dont need RPs as spawn, you can use the RP
as a radar to tell you when the enemy is close.

2. "APC spawning"
APCs are now best used like squad leaders in BF2, hide somewhere and dont die to keep the constant spawnpoint up. Having a close respawn capability is way better than having APC support. This gets most obvious when your team has "less usefull" APCs such as M113 or MTLB, now hide them behind a rock and have mobile respawn. Already did this on Khamisyah, we hid the apc in a bunker close to a flag that we needed to defend just to have RPs all over the place

3. "FOB spawning"
This is the most reasonable way to keep RPs permanent, but still not perfect in its current shape. When i attack and destroy a FOB i expect that all spawnpoints are destroyed, but due to the big radius (600m on 4km) a close by RP might be powered by another FOB and not get destroyed. Also hiding FOBs becomes even more important as they now have up to 10 spawnpoints relient on them instead of just 1. This goes to the point where FOBs are treated like unknown caches and should not be spawned on directly. In addition to that the big radius allows a multi angle attack supported by only 1 FOB with out the need to walk a lot after spawning.
At last same problem as with the "Flag spawning" occur when defending a FOB: easy reinforcing (from different angles), easter egg hunt and of course radar system.
Multi angle attack from 1 FOB:


All in all i still think that 0.98 RP System was perfect and didnt need any change.
How ever if you really want to keep some permanent RPs i would suggest to:
-Only have permanent RPs close to FOB (not APC, not Flag)
-Reduce radius so a RP only gets powered by 1 FOB at a time (fixed radius for all map sizes)
-increase overrun radius to make the radar less effective and easter egg hunt less annoying

[Nate.]

Very well put, Mats.

[Skitrel]

I have one issue with rallies over FOBs that hasn't been mentioned or talked about much.

In game the method to deduce location of enemy FOBs tends to be something like "which direction are the majority of enemies reinforcing from? West? Ok, probably a FOB over there."

One of the problems with rallies lies in their automatic removal, if I take my squad out somewhere to stop the enemy's supply line and find a FOB I categorically KNOW that I have done the job I came out here to do. The problem with rallies however is that, at least in my experience squad leading, you never see or hear them. At least unless you physically see the thing from distance before it is automatically removed, that only occurs when someone places them badly then, the majority of rallies people place are in bushes or hard to see locations.

So, the problem here is that if someone wants to head out and disturb the enemy supply line but doesn't find a FOB and never saw a rally, they have absolutely zero feedback on whether they achieved what they set out to do. Lots of squads go "FOB hunting" in game, few squads go "Rally hunting".

If rallies were more obvious, possible to hear from much longer distances, or the hunter squad got some feedback that they have successfully destroyed a rally, I believe it would work better.

Forcing them to be further away for perma-spawns has removed some of the meat-grinder effect that the beta had. But they're still not quite fitting into the tactical meta-game of PR. They're not something that you plan for because they're not something you can easily confirm you successfully got rid of.

Personally I'd like to see rallies require being within 20-50metres of a transport vehicle in order to stay permanent. These can be light vehicles, jeeps, HMMVWs, transport trucks, APCs, etc. This would create a situation where something highly visible and worthwhile blowing up is always near a rally that makes up the enemy's supply line. Thusly, this provides a means of knowing when you've disrupted the enemy supply line and provides something necessary to make rallies work as part of the team's supply line. It adds risk/reward, and it adds feedback.

I think this would integrate rallies into the tactical meta-game of PR much better than their current implementation. I have nothing against permanent rallies, I use them all the time. But this would give better feedback.

One extra bonus of doing this would be that we wouldn't need the automatic removal system anymore. If they're within 10-20metres of an enemy transport vehicle then they can be switched back to removal by knifing (when they're permanent, not when they're non-permanent), this would give direct feedback to the attacking squad that they've definitely disrupted the enemy's plan by removing the spawn point they relied upon.


Thoughts?

[a3dboy1]

1. Add coloured smoke effect next to the Rally Point.

1a. Make RP spawnable in the air with parachute and land on the SL designated mark. You know like real airborne supplies

OR

1b. Give Transport choppers RallyPoint "weapon" which would work the same way as crates. After deployment SL would have to activate it for his squad. To eliminate "instant spawn + crate" chopper's can deploy either 1 crate/2 small crates or 1 unactivated RP. Would be cool if choppers could deploy RPs mid-air and RPs would use chute and slowly fall down.

2. Add destroyed texture to the RP so enemy can see they actually made a clean up.

IMO, with 1b change Transport squad is a vital role on the battlefield again. Hoorah.

[Hurricane]

The RP changes go into the right direction and fix some of the problems pointed out during the beta, but leave others untouched.
Fixed problems:
-FOBs are more important again
Unfixed problems:
-lowered value of life due to closer respawn
-easter egg hunting
-radar system

This is what i experienced:
1. "Flag spawning"
Now flags keep your RPs powered and bring back flag spawning. The main issue here is the increased easter egg hunt required to take control of an enemy flag. Not only do you have to find the enemy and his FOBs you also have to find 3 bags full of magic.
Moreover it makes it easier (too easy) to reenfore a defense. Some of your men died? No problem, they will be right back with you attacking the enemy from behind.
Another problem is the radar function of RPs. If you are defending a flag that is well saturated with FOBs, so you dont need RPs as spawn, you can use the RP
as a radar to tell you when the enemy is close.

2. "APC spawning"
APCs are now best used like squad leaders in BF2, hide somewhere and dont die to keep the constant spawnpoint up. Having a close respawn capability is way better than having APC support. This gets most obvious when your team has "less usefull" APCs such as M113 or MTLB, now hide them behind a rock and have mobile respawn. Already did this on Khamisyah, we hid the apc in a bunker close to a flag that we needed to defend just to have RPs all over the place

3. "FOB spawning"
This is the most reasonable way to keep RPs permanent, but still not perfect in its current shape. When i attack and destroy a FOB i expect that all spawnpoints are destroyed, but due to the big radius (600m on 4km) a close by RP might be powered by another FOB and not get destroyed. Also hiding FOBs becomes even more important as they now have up to 10 spawnpoints relient on them instead of just 1. This goes to the point where FOBs are treated like unknown caches and should not be spawned on directly. In addition to that the big radius allows a multi angle attack supported by only 1 FOB with out the need to walk a lot after spawning.
At last same problem as with the "Flag spawning" occur when defending a FOB: easy reinforcing (from different angles), easter egg hunt and of course radar system.
Multi angle attack from 1 FOB:


All in all i still think that 0.98 RP System was perfect and didnt need any change.
How ever if you really want to keep some permanent RPs i would suggest to:
-Only have permanent RPs close to FOB (not APC, not Flag)
-Reduce radius so a RP only gets powered by 1 FOB at a time (fixed radius for all map sizes)
-increase overrun radius to make the radar less effective and easter egg hunt less annoying

Very well analyzed, hit the nail on the head.

1b. Give Transport choppers RallyPoint "weapon" which would work the same way as crates. After deployment SL would have to activate it for his squad. To eliminate "instant spawn + crate" chopper's can deploy either 1 crate/2 small crates or 1 unactivated RP. Would be cool if choppers could deploy RPs mid-air and RPs would use chute and slowly fall down.

I don't think this would be going in the right direction. Why put less emphasis on actual supply lines?

[Adalaxy]

I disagree with op. While the current system keeps action high it moves away from the realism. I agree with Mats.

[Colonelbruno]

I think the RP system is not that overpowered like in Beta, but still overpowered.

Suggestions:

1. Make RP permanent only with a fob nearby. Further more I would decrease the range to one large grid. It's just too vast, in my opinion.

2. I like the idea of a coloured smoke inside the RP to make it viewable for the enemy and also more dangerous to spawn there.

Outcome ------> Supply chain is still a must, Fob camping is not that successfull, RP's are easier to detect


_____________________________________

But still, I don't like RP at all. These are only suggestions to make a good compromise.

[Myru]

1. Make RP permanent only with a fob nearby. Further more I would decrease the range to one large grid. It's just too vast, in my opinion.

Agreed, the fact that RPs kind of enable flag-spawning without a firebase and the too vast range are the only small issues I currently have with the new system.

[ChallengerCC]

1a. Make RP spawnable in the air with parachute and land on the SL designated mark. You know like real airborne supplies

I had this idea today also, but only that the spawning person drops from the sky.
And the rally point time and positioning is the same as before 0.98 but its a red smoke that signals a para drop point/jump.

It would be way more realistic not to spawn the player on the ground ether to drop him out of the sky.
With a parachute he cant control, so he is forced to land on the smoke.

So dont drop a rally point, more throw a para drop grenade and thats the spawnpoint what is 500m in the air or so after 0-30 sec the rally/paradrop is spawnable and stays for 2min (not overrunable) and only spawnable for squad members.

You can resupply the para-drop grenade on a crate or so after 10-15min.


This system supports teamplay, tactic, emerson, realism, nice effects, coolnes everything except action.

[Brainlaag]

Mats has a very fair point, i fully agree with him.

[MADsqirrel]

So it's almost 6 months after release and people should been used to the new RP system.
What does everyone think of Rallies now? I wasn't able to play so I'm curious.

[Frontliner]

If it wasn't for UAV God Mode, I'd say it's the most broken and unnecessary thing right now. I know there's quite the number of people who disagree with me because action, fuck strategy and everything else(superior logistics, better resource management, better FOB placement). At least they are not always permanent like they were in the Beta, but the requirement to set them up permanently on 4km maps(drop it within 900m of a FOB or flag that belongs to your team. 900m) is a joke.

[Ulysses]

I still can't see any advantage to any of the changes after 0.98.
Like many people explained already, the rallies just replace strategy with numbers.