Project Reality Forums

Iv been thinking to make thread about the engineer kits and explosives generally for a while, since ambushing, mining and blowing up stuff has been my favorite thing to do in pr. The feedback is mainly aimed towards the uncoventional factions like ins/chins/taliban/hamas.

Artyied and the replacement ieds

Since 1.0, the old artillery-IED was removed from the unconventional factions (Insurgents got it back in 1.2). The new IED's that replaced the Arty-IED as Anti-Vehicle-IED are the mine-IED and the TNT-IED.

Taking away the most powerful tool from the unconventional factions, gave the blufor the chance to roam around pretty much everywhere they wanted. When the meinsurgents got the Arty-IED back, a skillfull guy could blow more stuff than ever before since the BluFor's fear of IED's has been reduced to zero in the previous versions.

The Mine/Mortar IED are just not capable to fulfill the role of the Arty-IED as an area-denial weapon for neither Inf or vehicles.

Bradley and aavp 20m away of the 1 artillery ied.

Result: both apc's black smoking. 2 of the ieds would have done the job.

2 Logistical trucks 20m away of mine ied. No trucks were harmed during the experiment.


Since the IED's are intended for ambushing, you need to be able to hide them up as best as you can using the terrain itself. The new IED's are using the dirt model to cover it up. Unfortunately the model is prety easy to see, even when placed on dirt typed terrain. It also killed the the use of imagination in the ambushes. Puting IED's on the railings, gates or even on trash for diferent kind of impacts is not possible anymore because of the dirt model.

Since mine-IED's instakill radius for example Lav-25 is 6m on highest its prety easy to go around. Arty-IED's instakill range for lav-25 is around 20m

(There is 2 arty-IED's hidden in 5m away of the lav-25 and the camera man on 2nd picture on the road. Where would you put mine-IED that the skilled crewman is not able to see it)





Chinsurgent/Hamas/Taliban/syrian engineer kits

Primary engineer kit for factions above gets the tnt-based IED's. Both of the tnt based IED's instakill radius for INF are 10m and the safearea from the IED is 15m. For apc's you need 2 box sized tnt's to blow it up right next to it and the stick tnt sized needs even more. I cant see any reason to choose it over the alternative kit with mortar/mine ied since they just offer two kinds of weaker ied's with same dirt model.

Since 1.0 fobs needs c4/tnt to collapse, all the blufor engineer kits gets 5 small c4's to do the job. Unconventional factions engineer kits doesen't get the small time delayed dynamites to counter the blufor's fobs.

As far as i know bf2 engine only allows you to have 9 slots for equipment. For the factions above the stone markings are taking one of the precious slots. The stone marking, as good as it might work in irl doesent work in pr. Using stonemarks to mark your IED's are just useles. The terrain and the 3d marker up to 66m is doing the job better. Since friendlies cant run over your ied's there is no point to mark it for yourself aswel. Marking mines with the stone marker is giving your mine locations away. You can place 6 stone marks, but you can place 30mines per kit.

The watercontainer ied is briliant mine for anti-personal purposes, since you can place 30 of them aswel per kit. But against armored vehicles it takes twice as much to kill them compared to m15/tm62 at-mine. Chinsurgents, hamas and the taliban cant give same kind of at-mine threat to blufor like they used to be with the old mines. Apc's, tank's and even sometimes the uparmored hmmw are able to take two watercontainer ied's before blowing up.
It takes twice as much ammo, time and the patience to make plausible at-minefield threat against blufor.

TLDR:

-Dirt model of the IED's are making effective ambushing harder.
-Mine IED needs bigger radious to be effective threat since its easy to spot.
-Tnt based IED's are not effective neither blowing assets or inf
-Stone markers are useles and should be replaced with small dynamite to blow fobs or binocs.
-Unconventional factions are lacking of proper at-mines.
-Unconventional engineers needs artillery IED back to counter dominating blufor armor.

Quite big wall of text, never wrote so much in any forum ever.

Insurgent engineer kit is very good, though it could have binoculars. Unconcentional factions engineer does get a mine ied (mosin-mortar ied-mine ied-watercontainer mine) if he takes alt-engineer.

Also, unconventional factions AP Mine alt has a mortar ied - not many know this I guess. AP mine kit almost always available, so it can be like "cheap" engineer kit rather than denial of infantry attack kit (mon-50 mines)

When 1.0 was releasesed I instantly suggested that player could decide whether he wants to bury the ied or not (the ied would have been small object like arty ied is on the ground) . Suggestion was never implemented.

e: gotta love how rapidly artyied can be placed.. just waiting it to be nerfed..

I agree with all of Finrar's points.

Some more weird stuff:
- Big TNT can't collapse a FOB (takes more than 5 minutes). As Finrar said, all TNT are completely useless. It is not initially understandable which one is useful against what (unlike the Mortar (against INF!) and Mine (against Vehicles!) IED).
- Mortar-IED can't collapse a FOB - does not make any sense initially.
- Mortar-IED should only not-damage heavier vehicles and easily be used against Trucks and Jeeps.



1.0 Explosives:
Water Container IED
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_engineer (1)
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_engineer_alt (1)
- meinsurgent_sapper (1)
- meinsurgent_engineer_pickup (1)


Mine IED
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_engineer_alt (1)
- meinsurgent_sapper (1)
- meinsurgent_engineer_pickup (1)


Mortars IED
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_engineer_alt (1)
- meinsurgent_sapper_alt (1)
- meinsurgent_engineer_pickup (1)


TNT based IED (small)
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_engineer (1)
- hamas_engineer (1)


TNT based IED (big)
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_engineer (1)


Dynamite
- chinsurgent/taliban/hamas_specialist (3)


-> Good changes with Arty-IED und Changeable Mine.

Jacksonez__ wrote:When 1.0 was releasesed I instantly suggested that player could decide whether he wants to bury the ied or not (the ied would have been small object like arty ied is on the ground) . Suggestion was never implemented.

We can only have 9 weapon slots, this would make it extremely difficult. So yeah, not going to happen most likely.

I agree too with most things said here tbh. The IED's now are more versatile and diverse for different applications since 1.0, but kinda lost it's purpose as they are more based on luck of someone driving over it now unlike before where you had more control.

Keep the feedback coming

Excellent research and analysis, thanks guys.

Could you cross-post to PR ? WGPWiki ?

I really enjoyed the arty-IEDs pre-1.0. Given how strong the BLUFOR is nowadays, it would certainly balance things if arty-IEDs were brought back - it would force BLUFOR to play more tactically and not rely solely on their superior weapons. E.g. troop formations would become very important (as in real life) - send 1 guy on point 50m ahead to check for arty-IEDs, which in turn leads OPFOR to target them, and BLUFOR has to counter with proper suppressive fire ... this creates an interesting dynamic that lends more depth to the game.

Unfortunately the opposite development took place. The devs nerfed the INS ambush ability, and I suspect it was in order to force more teamwork on the OPFOR side (not the BLUFOR side!), e.g. sapper + spotter squad, etc.

Reality check: teamwork is not emphasized on public servers (significant since it constitutes by far the largest part of PR activity) - there is no reliable fix or social mechanism to enforce teamplay for a "zerg" or unconventional faction in pub games.

So with all the drawbacks of unconventional factions (e.g. no body armour, almost no scopes, no higher running speed to make up for other shortages, nerfed ambush ability) the gamemode is - in my opinion - effectively unenjoyable by the OPFOR team in 80% of public games.

And I have seen that insurgency mode on public servers often end up with driving those INS team members to leave the server. Even with all the stats that the devs collect from servers, I doubt they are paying any attention to the "server killing factor" of insurgency mode... and therefore mere win/loss ratios for the factions in insurgency mode is not a complete representation of balance!

And this is a damn shame to me, because I (and many others) love asymmetric warfare and playing unconventional factions.

TL;DR - I think insurgency is a core part of PR's unique brand and its importance (and current implementation) should be seriously re-assessed by the devs.

I agree with OP 100%, the new IED's after 1.0 are cool, but also useless in many cases.

You plant a mortar IED and a vehicles drives near it - you can't do anything. You plant a mine IED and an INF squad walks near it - you can't do anything.

With the kits that have TNT you actually require ammo just to blow 1 armoured vehicle up as those IED's do so little damage.

And why is the mine IED an IED, why not just a mine that goes off when something drives over it? I mean, it's radius is like 1 or 2m so what's the point. It just further hinders the poor engineer who has to watch his mine. You can leave it as an IED, just make it explode when something drives over it.

Lots of great ideas and analysis. I basically agree with all of the above.

Especially the TNT IED's, if you select the (standard) wrong CE kit, then you're not going to get any good work done that day

So my suggestions - consider adding the arty IED back to the CE kits, buff the mine IED and if possible make it victim operated as well.

Finally, while the water contained IEDs are a little weak, I'm still pretty fond of them.

Lots to consider. Cheers, Murkey.

*edit* also the rock markers, great idea, but I know that I and the former lynx platoon members above simply don't use them as they give too much away.

It just further hinders the poor engineer who has to watch his mine. You can leave it as an IED, just make it explode when something drives over it.

if possible make it victim operated as well.

It was not considered as being realistic so it got reverted.
Hence why you can decide now to A plant a victim triggered mine or B plant a mine ied (afaik atleast insurgent sappers can)

I agree with Fin, the only thing, however, is, you should use the stone markings not to mark your IEDs but to catch people's attention. Place them on the far side of your IEDs/mines and people will try to go around it and run into the traps. I've seen it and I've done it, works great.

[R-DEV]Mineral wrote:We can only have 9 weapon slots, this would make it extremely difficult. So yeah, not going to happen most likely.

I agree too with most things said here tbh. The IED's now are more versatile and diverse for different applications since 1.0, but kinda lost it's purpose as they are more based on luck of someone driving over it now unlike before where you had more control.

Keep the feedback coming

Is it possible to do it like STD sapper has shovel, hence he could bury the mines but ALT sapper has NO shovel, so he could not bury the mines, just throw them like you throw the artyied?

I really hate the digging-ied-deep-in-the-ground-thing, hopefully it gets changed

Could the arty mine (the really good one from pre 1.0) be given to more different factions? I really miss it when i select the combat engi with other opfor factions when i'm stuck with the easy to see and weak tnt ied's.

Shameless bump, can a dev acknowledge the other IED's are a problem for all other insurgent forces?

Camo, I see you're still upset about that time when you waited for an hour for armor to drive over your TNT IEDs on dragonfly. They didn't even scratch the surface if I remember correctly.

haha damn right i am, but it's happened multiple times since.