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Are insurgents too conventional when compared to conventional factions ingame? I am thinking most specifically of Iraqi Insurgents. What do you all think?

They lack scopes, kits with ammo, armored vehicles, and aircraft but still feel conventional to me.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Does anyone think things should be changed? Is there a better way to represent insurgency or is the current system a good representation?

I also know that this has been suggested before, but each new version changes the dynamics of how each faction plays, so I think it is still appropriate to discuss this in the current version as well.

It is impossible to represent a proper insurgency without supply lines and a huge amount of civilians, in addition to a working society. Alas, that is impossible on the BF2 engine and I don't think any other engine could handle that either.

They are conventional because they are 24/7 fighters in BF2, when IRL Insurgents are regular citizens. Joe Civilian by day, Insurgent by night if you will.

By all means, if you have any suggestions on how to make the Insurgents more lifelike then the PR team are open to them.

Oh, I have plenty of ideas, but I want to know if a change is considered necessary. Also, I'm curious what problems people have with insurgency, particularly Iraqi insurgents.

I appreciate your post, and take by it that you feel them to be fairly conventional due to engine limitations but that it is not an extreme problem.

Its not an extreme problem, but their assets and the balance of their maps is the problem. example

I'm going to hop in here and say;
All war games portray soldiers DURING combat. I think there's way too much combat ingame proportional to what would be realistic. In reality, a deployment to Afghanistan is sitting around, driving around, walking around for the vast majority of the time. A soldier going over would probably get in a coupla firefights their entire 6 mo deployment. The vast majority of "combat" over there, is taking a dozen sniper (sniper means guy with AK who's pretty good with it) hits off the wall, the entire contingent rushing to the wall, and firing off $5000 worth of ammo at nothing in particular. Or driving around hoping not to explode.

You want a portrayal of average military life, get the Sims, have your Sim enter the military career. That's what the vast majority of 1st world militaries do. Not very much, the vast majority of the time.

CommunistComma wrote: You want a portrayal of average military life, get the Sims, have your Sim enter the military career.

Now, that made my day. ^^

Although I'm not entirely happy with all the BLUFOR kits laying around in insurgency, it basically means after first BLUFOR assault game changes from guys with AKs vs guys with scoped m4s to guys with m4s vs guys with m4s.

CommunistComma wrote:You want a portrayal of average military life, get the Sims, have your Sim enter the military career. That's what the vast majority of 1st world militaries do. Not very much, the vast majority of the time.

Lol I have a confession to make.

I DO make my Sims join the military career, and I simulate their deployments by playing Project Reality. LOL.

So if I die in Project Reality, I either delete or kill the military sims that died in Project Reality.

The other day, one of my sims, Cale, he died from a truck bomb in Fallujah West.

His wife is now a widow and a single mother of two.

LOL. It makes video games REALLY fun if you integrate different games with each other.

^ WOW!

That's some creative gaming you've got going on, mate.

On topic. My main issue with insurgents/taliban is the fact that an AK wielding maniac can transform into a fully trained SAW gunner capable of hitting point targets out to 600m simply by pressing "g". It really kills the immersion of "Insurgency" when you take your squad into a cache area and start getting shot at by 2-3 SAW's.

[R-DEV]Jaymz wrote:^ WOW!

That's some creative gaming you've got going on, mate.

On topic. My main issue with insurgents/taliban is the fact that an AK wielding maniac can transform into a fully trained SAW gunner capable of hitting point targets out to 600m simply by pressing "g". It really kills the immersion of "Insurgency" when you take your squad into a cache area and start getting shot at by 2-3 SAW's.

But thats also kinda.. realistic, why wouldnt insurgents pick up enemy kits? Too bad you cant make em reload coalition weps allot slower.. and im one of those guys sticking with my AK till end, atleast on taliban, they've got a kit with AK47, 4 nades, ammo bag and two nade traps!!!11

Nebsif wrote:But thats also kinda.. realistic, why wouldnt insurgents pick up enemy kits? Too bad you cant make em reload coalition weps allot slower.. and im one of those guys sticking with my AK till end, atleast on taliban, they've got a kit with AK47, 4 nades, ammo bag and two nade traps!!!11

nah, i'd stick with my trusty buckshot over most unspecialised coalition kits, obviously i would take a sniper or perhaps an LMG but shotgun > m16 for sure

Yes insurgents are far too conventional. This is due to the lack of mines and IEDs placed by the insurgent team. A skilled team can place so many mines in a map like fallujah that the armour cannot actually enter the city proper. This however takes a lot of time and patience coupled with the vulnerability of caches to infantry assault. I have often placed 50 or so mines a game and racked up a lot of kills but it's very dependent on luck as they are so visible. A solution to the lack of mines and their (true) power would be to implement sinkable mines. I find it absolutely ridiculous that mines can been seen from hundreds of metres with optics and abusing the terrain is the best way to use them.

IEDs are where the insurgents fall short mainly in my opinion. The reduction in sapper IED power was a good change but it means the insurgents lack a good source of remote detonated explosives to deal with vehicles. A simple increase in arty IEDs would suffice, maybe 3-4 a map would be good. If you worry this is too much think about the amount of times you've seen a successful arty IED and multiply that by 4.

[R-DEV]Jaymz wrote:^ WOW!

That's some creative gaming you've got going on, mate.

On topic. My main issue with insurgents/taliban is the fact that an AK wielding maniac can transform into a fully trained SAW gunner capable of hitting point targets out to 600m simply by pressing "g". It really kills the immersion of "Insurgency" when you take your squad into a cache area and start getting shot at by 2-3 SAW's.

im so glad there is a dev that thinks this^.

is it possible to make every kit instakill if picked up except the one requested?

now talk some since into them (other devs) and convince them that picking up dead soldiers kits are retarded. what if everyone had an epipen to simulate dragging, that way if ur medic gets whacked ur not completely screwed if picking up kits were disabled. that way you dont magically become a fully trained medic with the switch of a kit. someone can epipen him and get him to safety to in order to heal himself or everyone in the sqd donate their field dressing.

good idea^?


and make the stupid grappling hook limited to snipers or spotters...its ridiculous the things i see sqds do with it.

Anderson29 wrote: is it possible to make every kit instakill if picked up except the one requested?

It's possible, but not ideal. Ideally, we'd want an insurgent who picks up an M249 SAW to have terrible accuracy (not possible though).

Anderson29 wrote: and make the stupid grappling hook limited to snipers or spotters...its ridiculous the things i see sqds do with it.

The grapple is more of a tool to overcome obstacles that a squad could scale irl, like a wall. Limits to how high it can reach might be in order though. So entire squads aren't getting onto roofs in a matter of seconds.

joethepro36 wrote:A simple increase in arty IEDs would suffice, maybe 3-4 a map would be good.

I'm quite confident that we're going to see more ArtyIED's spawn in the next version, hopefully they'll be added to Basrah and the like.

It simply wouldn't make sense not to update the Insurgent faction strength-wise as they are getting raped almost every round I play.

Anderson29 wrote:im so glad there is a dev that thinks this^.

is it possible to make every kit instakill if picked up except the one requested?

now talk some since into them (other devs) and convince them that picking up dead soldiers kits are retarded. what if everyone had an epipen to simulate dragging, that way if ur medic gets whacked ur not completely screwed if picking up kits were disabled. that way you dont magically become a fully trained medic with the switch of a kit. someone can epipen him and get him to safety to in order to heal himself or everyone in the sqd donate their field dressing.

good idea^?


and make the stupid grappling hook limited to snipers or spotters...its ridiculous the things i see sqds do with it.

@Anderson, Giving everyone even 1 epipen sort of makes the medic kit redundant. I agree that its odd that an infantary soldier can pick up a kit an instantly be able to revive a downed teamate, but its better than giving everyone the capability to revive and also heal with a patch. I guess its having to get around the limits of vanilla BF2. In a sense the current system simulates how the "wounded" medic advises a teamate on how to heal him.
-I agree about the grappling hook though definitely.

Back to the point though, I think the insurgents are pretty unconventional if you look at the assets available to them and how they compare to Blufor teams, for instance, suicide vehicles and remote explosives (aside from C4) can be used by any insurgent player. I think with the new mortars, and obviously i don't know how they work, but if they are mobile, then that will really add an extra level of asymetrical warfare.

The main problem is the multitude of enemy kits that can be picked up, on Ramiel for instance, half way through the game, all insurgents can be carrying US kits.
It's not as if in reality insurgents wouldn't nab western kit, i've read 2 accounts, one from op Glacier, and the other op Anaconda where the taliban have been carrying British or US kit (almost like a trophy).

Quikli wrote:Lol I have a confession to make.

I DO make my Sims join the military career, and I simulate their deployments by playing Project Reality. LOL.

So if I die in Project Reality, I either delete or kill the military sims that died in Project Reality.

The other day, one of my sims, Cale, he died from a truck bomb in Fallujah West.

His wife is now a widow and a single mother of two.

LOL. It makes video games REALLY fun if you integrate different games with each other.

Hahaha that litterly made me LOL. It really made my day

On the topic of mines/IEDs, i strongly feel we need more Arty IEDs. I like how the mines are quite easy to spot and the IEDs are hidden. That means you have to use the IEDs if you want to kill anyone other than blind nubs. (though there are many of them )
Using the IEDs take more patiance and more skill, since you cant just spam 50 of them all over the map and wait for the kills. (+ its SOOO much more revarding when you get to push the button and watch it blow up yourself )
That is alot better for gameplay IMO.

[R-DEV]Jaymz wrote:It's possible, but not ideal. Ideally, we'd want an insurgent who picks up an M249 SAW to have terrible accuracy (not possible though).

the only reason i suggest this drastic of a change is to get rid of the kit bug(wearing helmet and kit of enemy). if it was only the weapon getting picked up then i couldnt care less. and when enemy weapons are captured...like the at4 and the HAT or any u.s./ brit weapon for that matter, they shouldnt be able to reload it at an insurgent cashe....come on...

[R-DEV]Jaymz wrote:The grapple is more of a tool to overcome obstacles that a squad could scale irl, like a wall. Limits to how high it can reach might be in order though. So entire squads aren't getting onto roofs in a matter of seconds.

thats what im getting at...whats the point of even having obstacles then. no one is opening the locked gates anymore...they just grapple over the wall...cuz its quieter. the way we trained to get over walls was "you get a vehicle to park next to it. a person pulls security from a top the vehicle. 1 by 1 the sqd gets over. tell me that cant be done ingame...it also defeats the purpose of setting up a good defense and its damn near impossible to climb rope with 60-100 lbs of gear attached to you...if the rope could only be thrown 10 feet in the air and slow the climb rate down...then i could live with that.....

Anderson29 wrote:the only reason i suggest this drastic of a change is to get rid of the kit bug(wearing helmet and kit of enemy). if it was only the weapon getting picked up then i couldnt care less. and when enemy weapons are captured...like the at4 and the HAT or any u.s./ brit weapon for that matter, they shouldnt be able to reload it at an insurgent cashe....come on...

Problem with the way the ammo system works. It's team specific, not weapon specific as we would like.

Talibans are much more better portrayed as talibans as insurgents are portrayed as insurgents in PR.

insurgents should have completely different tactics as they do now ( acting same as conventional forces), like dropping kit behind the corner, walk around unarmed, enemies come closer, go back to the kit, kill them, run away etc., slowly kill blufor one at a time, stall them so to speak.

But i have no solution sadly.

My 2 cents on the subject.

Firstly, decrease the distance of enemy troops to ins hideouts that disables the hideout spawns. I don't like how hideouts follow the same rules as FOBs like that. Especially seeing as most ins maps are city maps, where there might be blocks of distance between an enemy squad and a hideout, with the former completely unaware of the latter, but still somehow managing to neutralize it. Abundance of spawn points can nicely represent the difficulties convenctional forces have seeking out insurgents. If ins can only spawn and channel in from their main base and one hideout somewhere near the cache, as it almost always devolves into, it becomes way too easy for the US team to pinpoint the general course of the ins deployement - where they come from, where the hotspots are and so forth. Indeed, ins should be about stealth, ambush and everything. I mean, in the end, why would a squad, behind a 4 meter wall, 25 meters away from an insurgent hideout (which seems to operate as a tunnel, does it not?), magically stop insurgents coming from there.

Also, for the love of god, do not remove the ability of ins to pick up blufor kits. It adds a very good layer to the game, namely that when blufor screws up, there are consequences beyond losing just a ticket. Of course, in an ideal world, an ins picking up a blufor kit should just replace his main weapon, not also pick up complicated weapons systems of an engineer/whatever, and a restrainer for pete's sake.

One other issue regards the maps and the engine itself, so it's not very likely to be changed, but good to be discussed nonetheless. Now, in citymaps, how many buildings are actually accessible? I mean, apart from the apartment complexes everyone knows by heart and a few small, one-room buildings, there are actually very few buildings to seek cover in, fire upon enemies from and so forth. Urban combat should be a NIGHTMARE of epic proportions, not just running from garden to garden. Should blufor decide to move into a city, they should be in deep shit, paranoid about every building, every nook and cranny. Again, it's a matter of providing insurgency with more options to combat the bigass guns of blufor.

Essentialy, all changes should boil down to this - give blufor more firepower and mobility (that is, give them the assets needed to blow ins skyhigh and get out of there when the jobs done, something that the blufor already has really), and give insurgency more flexibility and stealth (which is, allow them to blend in with the environment, (dis)engage at will, and the resources to hurt the enemy while doing it), while reducing they staying power to make sure that whenever they're drawn into a standard convenctional skirmish, they get slaughtered. Make ins rely on brains, not brawn, and make blufor rely on fancy assets, co-ordination and sheer firepower.