Project Reality Forums

I had joined a game with about 55 players on Al Basrah, about halfway through the round, and was assigned to the British side. I opened the squad window to find that all of the squads with rally points were full (of course), so I joined another open squad. The only available spawn point to our team was at base, so I spawned there. I looked around base to see that there were no vehicles to be found. There was a group of 12-15 players at base sitting around, throwing smoke grenades, spinning in circles, and waving handcuffs in the air waiting for a mode of transport. Great. So we waited, and we waited, and we waited for some kind of vehicle to spawn. Probably 10 minutes after I'd joined (and had been teamkilled), a transport helicopter spawned. Half of the players there loaded up and took off while the rest of us watched it fly off. About 2 minutes after it had left, the helicopter had crashed into the ground.

About 5 minutes later an APC finally does spawn, and most of us are able to load in and get out of there. After we drive to our location and are dropped off, which takes roughly 4 minutes, our squad sets up a rally point and prepares to move into the city, when we are ambushed and killed, and our rally is destroyed. We respawn at base to find that there are no vehicles. At this point I've spent roughly 20 minutes waiting to get into the action only find myself right back at base in the same situation, and I decide I'll just call it a day and find something else to do.

I'm glad this wasn't my first time playing Project Reality, because if it had I may have not ever picked up the game again.


Vehicles were made less available to players through lengthened spawn time in an attempt to encourage players to value vehicles more and to do their best to preserve them. It was also done to make it more difficult for them to simply spawn back at the base after being killed and zoom back into the battle in a vehicle, encouraging players to value their lives and to create rally points with squad members.

Sounds great on paper, but this measure has been ineffective and really hasn't encouraged players to value vehicles or to create rally points. Those who value teamwork and tactical play will play accordingly, those who do not really cannot be forced to do so. What this measure has done is create a scarcity of vehicles, which on larger maps, like Al Basrah or Kashan Desert, where the main base is far away from the action, can mean that half the team is stuck back at main.

Similarly, the long helicopter spawns don't discourage inexperienced pilots from flying, but they do punish the rest of the tea by forcing them to go without that vehicle for whatever inordinately long amount of time it is gone.

I don't believe any amount of coercion can make a player who does not value teamwork from taking a vehicle himself and driving it into battle. Whether or not this is true, this method of inducing proper teamplay has clearly not worked as intended.

When devising a method to create a desired outcome, it's not only important to determine the most effective method and to implement it, but also to reevaluate the effects of that method afterward and determine if that desired outcome is being met as intended, and if there are any significant consequences of this method that undermine the whole thing altogether.

I do not think that the desired outcome is being met here (proper use of vehicles), and I do think there are serious unintended consequences (team having no mode of transport). The DEVs should really look into reevaluating the effectiveness of this measure, and hopefully implement something more effective that doesn't punish others.

I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts and comments.

+1 This has always been a problem, especially on the big maps like Basrah, Kashan, and Fool's Road. More vehicles need to be added.

Step 1: Get Officer Kit
Step 2: Place FOB
Step 3: Have squad build said FOB
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!

In all seriousness, if you're out of transport, it's because you're not being proactive about ensuring said transport exists. On maps like Al Basrah, building a bunker at the Main Base is very useful as it provides Land Rovers (Humvees in V2). And if all else fails, you can walk to the objective. Will it take a while, yes, will it get you there, yes, will it surprise the enemy, nine times out of ten.

I agree, I am playing PR a lot lately and transport are problems very often...

I understand DEV wants to limit it to enforce people using it effectively but shit happens... vehicles get destroyed, people uses it alone or abandon it, etc.

In the end, you get 1 or 2 squad waiting 5-10 minutes at main for a any transport to respawn... Not to mention, as a SL, I do not trust most of the blue pilot or truck/apc driver to take my squad to a point in safety...

GreedoNeverShot wrote:+1 This has always been a problem, especially on the big maps like Basrah, Kashan, and Fool's Road. More vehicles need to be added.

thats just delaying the inevitable

While much of what has been said is true, both the problem and suggested solution. A well admin'd server really helps to keep asset wasting to a minimum. I think a little tweaking with transport assets may help but if players have the same attitude (wasting assets, soloing, no teamwork) it won't matter how fast or how many assets spawn. Just Sayin !

Tirak wrote:Step 1: Get Officer Kit
Step 2: Place FOB
Step 3: Have squad build said FOB
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!

In all seriousness, if you're out of transport, it's because you're not being proactive about ensuring said transport exists. On maps like Al Basrah, building a bunker at the Main Base is very useful as it provides Land Rovers (Humvees in V2). And if all else fails, you can walk to the objective. Will it take a while, yes, will it get you there, yes, will it surprise the enemy, nine times out of ten.

This is the answer. If you want transport, hope for a smart team. There's plenty of transport. Danton, in your case you joined a server that was already halfway through the game. That is the worst cause you don't know what noobs did to the vehicles. But seriously. Put FB's down, and you have an FO, that u can spawn at to get close to the action. Cars spawn at it too.

Well, I tried doing truck taxi sometimes on those maps and it works 50/50, some squads just don't bother getting in because they want their own vehicle to ditch after while other are just doubting the driver may run them in the wrong spot. But sometimes they agree and it works very well, a lot more when there is no ISV but only those trucks around.

APC Taxi is just very hard. People complain about it being used that way when it's done and you end up needing to support them (like an IFV) more than transport them as mech-inf. It's also less reliable than the truck because it can't carry crates while the truck can. It's slower, attracts fire and LAT/HATs and is bigger and less easy to drive than the rest.
On map like Kashan, when there is only one truck or two available (or an APC), inf refuses to get in and wait for a blackhawk to transport them, even tho it is more likely to be shot down/it will take time before respawning. Hence certain enormous clusterf*cks at main during games.

Players are hardcoded indeed, but is there anything we can do to promote other taxi than choppers?
Giving more vehicles isn't any better, it will promote the *drive&ditch* attitude we have right now with ISV's and trucks..

the problem is not with the vehicles spawn time, if you get more vehicles people will just ditch them. the problem is with the player base though (which is pretty hardcoded),the only way tp change this attitude is if people like as an example the thread creater grew a pair and walked (and for christ sake if you make a rally point make sure to make it away from the fight so that it's not compromised)
but i really don't get the squads uneasiness with walking on small maps like basrah. on kashan i can understand the problem but tbh you almost never run out of some kind of transport on that map. and if you get a truck, don't go to the objective if there are no FOBs up, go create a spawn for your team instead of making a cluster fuck of ditched vehicles at the bunkers.

yes I had a situation like TannHauser says yesterday on T&T Muttrah. My Mec squad was at main after being wiped out and a friendly (solo) apc came roling in the base. We ran behind it to try and board it. The guy's squad mate hops in the thing and they roll out together. Leaving us behind. Even when yelling in the chat that the APC is an Armored Personel Carrier instead of a light tank they dont pick us up. Moments later they get taken out by a hostile APC. My squad had a LAT so we could have helped them out as well.

My point is: Players are hardcoded like several people in here said already. I think the problem lies there. Lots of people use APC's like Light tanks and trucks as a one way ride and park it next to the firebase.

Personally I never had it as a problem. Inconvenienced?...yes, problem...no. Besides Kashan desert most maps are easily walkable. And from what I can see you sat around at the main base for 15 min? What a waste of time, you could have walked out three time to the village in that time.

I think this problem comes right back to the players. They are wanting to be plopped in the fire fight without any work. More vehicles are not the problem, hell the amount of vehicles now can be too much.

Is there shitty servers sometimes? Yeah it happens on every server. Dumb players messing everything up. But sounds like you need to be a little more careful with your rally points, think out side the box (go around) and have your squad working as a team.

Like the saying goes "A three minute walk from your rally's better than a a 10 minute hike from the main base"

The real problem lies with APCs, which always play 'tank' and get shot without even trying to transport troops.

If PR begins using lightly-armed, true APCs (not the IFVs included today), as they plan to do for 0.85/0.9, a good APC transport team could end this problem rather easily, and less of the things would be used to rape infantry and other APCs.

Without a good APC transport team, I'm sure that the DEVs will reduce the frequency of light transports ('jeeps'), which will make things even harder on noob-infested servers.

gclark03 wrote:The real problem lies with APCs, which always play 'tank' and get shot without even trying to transport troops.

If PR begins using lightly-armed, true APCs (not the IFVs included today), as they plan to do for 0.85/0.9, a good APC transport team could end this problem rather easily, and less of the things would be used to rape infantry and other APCs.

Without a good APC transport team, I'm sure that the DEVs will reduce the frequency of light transports ('jeeps'), which will make things even harder on noob-infested servers.

IIRC, the Brits don't have APCs(like the Stryker) but use the Warrior as their main troop transport, could be wrong though.

Vehicle spawn times are not long enough in a lot of cases (particularly in those cases of armour), and in transport helicopters (5 minutes!? HUH!?).

The whole point, so far as I can see it, of having long vehicle spawn times is so that there are actually consequences for a team's actions, something there never was in vBF2. A team who squanders their assets should be harshly punished, while a team whose AT is highly effective should be rewarded. A team whose logistics are great, and are able to establish stable spawn points should be rewarded, and the only way of ensuring all these things is to have long vehicle spawn times.

Yes, it sucks if you join halfway through a game, and yes it can suck when you are surrounded by the incompetant, but the alternative doesn't even bear thought. An easy way to avoid it even with an inept team is to get a firebase in your base at the start of the round so you can farm vehicles off it.

I've never had problems with vehicles spawn time, on most maps you can walk from main base in to the action in about 5 minutes... and I have never spend more then 5 minutes in the base waiting for transport, maybe except maps with carriers where swimming to the shore takes too much time.

If those people in the chopper had waited for you, you'd continue playing.
But you can't do anything about some ******** in online gaming.

[R-DEV]CodeRedFox wrote:Besides Kashan desert most maps are easily walkable.

-Kashan Desert is easily walkable, it's people that aren't easily walkable. Only girly-men whine about walking on Kashan. Girly-men.

-Stop wasting vehicles and this(OP's situation) won't be a problem.

request transport instead of waiting one. call an APC / truck / jeep for transport, they are likely to help.

I read something in one of the dev journals about vehicles being destroyed will cost tickets in the next version, so maybe you will see more folks wanting to have infantry along to protect their vehicles.

I think something else that folks don't think about with this version is rally placement. With the older versions you could place a rally anywhere as long as it wasn't seen. With the new version you need to place the rally somewhere so that the enemy won't even walk around it. This usually means a rally farther away from your intended area of operation, but ensures that it will be there for the long haul, instead of being overrun by some random insurgent that happens to stand near the building you put it in.

An FOB would have been nice, but the OP would have had to wait for crates and given his difficulty getting just a transport it probably would have been a long wait.

I find people will always do things happily if theres a reward for it.

So, teams could get extra assets spawned at main for each Forward Outpost they have built. Primarily transport assets.

The problem with this though is that people would build them in their main just to get the rewarded assets, thus eliminating the point of them.

To get round this would be to only alow the reward for FO's built at control points, which would also give people an extra reason to go help cap them. Also if possible, FO's built a certain distance from main.