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Does anyone else feel like insurgents win at least 2/3 of the time on Al Basrah? I feel like the requirement for Brits to work together and use assets carefully along with the way insurgent team can play in a more "decentralized" way works in heavily in favor of the insurgents on public servers where around 1/2 the players are newbies accustomed to VBF2.

I don't know if this is really a balance issue, as it's hard to say who would win when both teams had good players. Do you think it's worth increasing the number of tickets the Brit team has to make the W/L ratio even?

You are definitely right when you say that its much easier for a random bunch of n00bs to play on the insurgents than it is the British but i dont think it would be right to change the game because a lot of people suck.

If anything maybe the DEVs could relax the amount of tickets lost when killing a civie or losing an armor piece. That could lead to the Brits(the ones who know what they are doing) having more time to find the caches and result in a few more wins for the Brits.

If the brits have any clue, they are going to win unless you have a HIGHLY organized INS team, in which case its about even. IMO we shouldnt neuter a map for balance just because some people are plain stupid and feel the Challenger would make a great submarine.

I believe it comes down to the way people play.

Armor:
Brits think they're Rambo in their armour, thus using them too close to the front lines. There's a ticket penalty for losing them, and a long spawn time. In those hard minutes, your team is without armor support.

Also, armor often finds its own little spot camping Insurgents without helping the rest of the team. Blowing up the bridges or deterring the enemy vehicles are good plans, but just providing cover support for the infantry advancing is the most helpful thing you can do in your Scimitar/Warrior/Challenger II. However, there are cases where the infantry is wiped out, so I excuse not supporting if there's no one to support.

A properly crewed tank should have three people. Crewman driver and gunner and an engineer in the .50 cal position to repair if needed. That's three pairs of eyes. Driver usually looks forward, gunner checks the sides and .50 cal checks the rear. Try sneaking up on that tank. Sadly, not everyone's willing to 3-man the tank, but it's easier to find them now.

Helicopter:
People often request a drop in hot zones. As the pilot, he/she should decide the safest landing zone and let the passengers hoof it. A PR tip wisely states: a long walk beats a long respawn time for the chopper.

Helis usually take the quickest way. Sure, you'll save a minute, but that Sa-7 anti-air missile that just whizzed by won't miss next time. Take a safe flight path, barely scraping the edge of the map.

Commander:
Many people are afraid of this job. But, you don't have to take up the job throughout the whole round, just drop a Command Post and Bunker at Airport.

If you have a willing squad with shovels, set up firebases where it's smart. Not right on Industry's doorstep, make it a little out of the way. Ones in the desert are easier to defend. The flat land gives a clear view of incoming hostiles. With new deployable toys .8, it'll be even easier to defend them.

Maybe one thing that could be done instead of having a Red Diamond that's within 100 meters of the Cache, decrease the radius a bit so there's less time looking.

Even with noobs, 1 good squad of brits can pretty much do all the work.

for the brits to win they HAVE to take out those bridges that cut off the palace. if they dont do that the brits will lose 90% of the time.

Re-add tickets to the INS maybe 300brit vs 900INS not 9999 thats totally unreal for there to be 99999 INS fight in one spot lol in real life you can kill off you appoint then kill the caches.

or give them 99999 take away the Grenade launcher make it smoke only and only 4 rpg's so there not spamed vs inf only and there used to kill armor right now there not used vs armor they just ied/molov armor and rpg inf one of the 2 would truly make game play much better

Anderson29 wrote:for the brits to win they HAVE to take out those bridges that cut off the palace. if they dont do that the brits will lose 90% of the time.

No they dont!

Trust me, they really dont. It's an annoyance to everyone when that happens.

The brits have to use their assets, and their commander assets to win on this map. Blowing up the damn bridge only limits the suicide cars that a tank with a 3 man crew can take out with no problem.

Current Al Basrah:

Brits: Spawn, build the bunker cus the stupid commander wants you to, then you take your own land rover and go blow a bridge. Then you blow another bridge, then another. Then when you do that you finally might maybe attempt to find a cache.

The reason why I dont play this map anymore is because the sheer stupidity that allot of people on the British team have.

"Lets drive our tanks to the mosque"= bad idea.
"Hey Merlin pilot, were all going to grab kits with grappling hooks in them to be 1337 and drop ontop of the mosque"= bad idea.

The map is unbalanced for 1 reason, its reality based. The UK can win with almost no teamwork for everyone besides 1 squad, there armor is made to be used some what close in desert and ends up being used in the city, people shot at civis and are plain stupid.

"Hey Merlin pilot, were all going to grab kits with grappling hooks in them to be 1337 and drop ontop of the mosque"= bad idea.

Correction, great idea when at a near by building, not mosque itself.

The map is not meant to be unbalance i.e. one side is going to win almost all the time, it is meant to be asymetrically balanced. The insurgents are meant to use the city and the fast spawn time to overwhelm the brits in environments which dont allow their superior weaponary and firepower to be fuly utilised.

Some ideas: Give Brits 1 attack chopper with a long respawn time. Take away the sa7 for insurgents (do RL insurgents have higher end gear like that)? Make the challenger & apcs appropriately tough against RPGs so people might actually ride in the bradley (whatever it is) without the fear of insta death from a 1+2 RPG or IED punch. If there is a not too difficult way to code it so some passenger possibly die but not all it should be done. I'd much rather have all vehicles NOT detonate killing all occupants when destroyed but just get "wrecked". This way people could still escape and it'd be more realistic. The challenger should be like a doomsday machine when the insurgents see it, knowing that only a hail of RPGs or IEDs can take it out. It's pretty scary already but...

Also I'd like for the insurgent commander to be able to build something like "mad max" style barriers across roads (tires/scrap metal/car husks etc). You could use them to block in villages and create mini strongholds etc. It would simulate better preparations for an attack. Finally it'd be nice to either add some new houses or reconfigure some areas to be more interesting and or keep it fresh.

Ive been playing Al Basrah allot lately, to be honest the brits win the majority of times. However, the times Ive lost playing as brit the insurgents had a VERY good defence going, getting all of their vehicals out of palace and hiding them around the city instead of rushing tword the brit main (which is extremely annoying....). They would use the civi's as "meat sheilds" while advancing and what not. It all depends on the teams like others have said. Unfortunatly you get those times when your team just has their heads up their asses and wait around at the main base for vehicals when its easy to walk. But yes decreasing the amount of tickets lost for armor/helicopter loss would be nice, that or increase the tickets slightly when starting the round.

Defiyur wrote:Some ideas: Give Brits 1 attack chopper with a long respawn time.

Nah, then people who play INS will complain, If anything give them a light scout chopper with their merlin, the scout chopper of course having some sort of armament (mini guns/rocket pods more or less their equivalent to the LB gunship since those are lightly armored and people wont complain as much...I think)

Very simply, it is two types of gameplay, with each vying against each other...

Run and gun vs Tactical

In short: This is insurgency. Its meant for the brits to have a very hard time. And the only way to win is to have a very tactical and communicative team.

The brits are meant to move with a great deal of caution and have everything at the ready with very well timed sequence. They are challanged with first, the safety of the base from bigred and suicide tactics. And then moving to secure a faward assaulting position and then to spread out and search the area for enemy strongpoints.

And the insurgents have a very easy job...Use dirty sneak attacks to repel the assault.

The british forces need to have all their squads working well with the absance of smacktards...(IMO the smacktards should be on the ins side anyway ) the squad members need to use voip and to control their emotions and excersise their skill mindfully as they very quickly come under attack.

In this way, insurgency is hugely successful and provides the desired effect. My only advice is, is if you are on the british side, you should talk often about what you are doing, otherwise get on the other team.

Psykogundam wrote:Very simply, it is two types of gameplay, with each vying against each other...

Run and gun vs Tactical

and lets see they want run and gun in this game last i looked no they did not.

you may only see a true brit team once a day they need to take out all but 4 rpgs and the grenade launcher and give it 8 smokes. then gameplay will be way better off.

Defiyur wrote:Take away the sa7 for insurgents (do RL insurgents have higher end gear like that)?

Yes they do. This is only 1 Pic of many that proves it.

0.8 will change this map a lot - assuming they fix the magic molotov bug. Imagine how hard it will be to kill the tank with only IEDs, RPGs, and suicide cars.

I also think it would be cool to add in an attack chopper. The airport is so big it feels like there should be something more there. While it might give the Brits a big advantage to have some air power, I bet it would balance out overall on pub servers since newbs would crash it constantly & hemorrhage tickets.