Tactical Mod 0.3 Playtest Impressions (Nov. 9th)

[Kilrogg]

Use this thread to discuss your impressions on TMod 0.3.

I myself love the mod, was just as fun as last time we played it. Very intense and tactical infantry gameplay where cover takes a whole new meaning.

As far as the 0.3 changes go:

Pros

- More smoke/no frags on some classes was a great idea, also limited frag grenades to I think 2 on most classes. With 3-4 people in the squad having smoke nades you really could create smoke walls and use them very effectively to move thru.

Cons
- Limited ammo on medic class. I'm all for making support a requirement in any good squad, but I think 2 clips is a bit extreme. 3 clips maybe would be more appropriate. Other classes like assault still get 7 clips of ammo.
- Increasing respawn timer. I understand the concept and it's a good idea but it ends up hindering the gameplay instead of adding to the realism/intensity of the battle. There should either be a cap on the amount of extra time penalty you get or it should be 1 second per death not 3 per.
- Large open vehicle-base maps simply don't work well with the mod imo. Zatar lasted forever (I realize tickets weren't ajusted properly but even then) and wasn't very fun at all. It felt like my squad spent more time waiting for respawn and then dying to armor/air than actually fighting.

My suggestions

- 32p maps for 64 players. 16p maps for 32 players. Smaller maps are definately better suited for the mod, especially infantry maps like Karkand, Mashtuur and smaller versions of Dalian (lots of fun despite being an open map).
- Wake Island needs some adjusting. 12 vs 12 was pretty terrible for USMC. It was extremely hard to make it to any CP because of lack of air support and abundance of jeeps (ie .50 cals) and AA and transport chopper for China. Whatever we tried was destroyed by fast moving squads in jeeps and the transport chopper bringing squads in where ever we went. w/ 50+ players it could be a bit different but with only 1 BH, no jets and all the defense China starts with it's a very hard map for USMC. Too bad because infantry fights on Wake are awesome fun.
The main problem is that, sure, you can kill the jeeps and the chopper if most of your squad goes AT. But then you have piss-poor firepower on the ground because the mp5 is a complete joke (along with it's China/MEC counterparts).

Overall, despite loving it just as much as the first time I played it, I have very mixed opinions depending on the map. Karkand/Dalian/Mashtuur are awesome, then maps like Zatar I didn't find fun at all and much prefered it's vanilla BF2 counterpart (and I hate vehicle maps in general).

[perry]

I was getting kills with the Linebacker on Zatar that I wouldn't normally get. Not many, but enough that it seemed like it was more effective. I spent most of my time in that thing during that round, spamming missles - especially after I switched to support and could refill myself. Didn't get a team damage or team kill like I normally would. Didn't try the Stinger sites much.

Wake wasn't fair for the USMC. They were bleeding until they held 2 flags. IMHO, bleed should stop when they get one flag. But, at the end, I was afraid the PLA would lose when we didn't have a spawn for a few seconds. USMC coulda had a 8-0 win

[Deveran]

I personally wasn't impressed by the mod as much as I thought I would be. The bigger maps completely sucked. 1 and a half to 2 and a half minutes just to respawn makes me want to quit immediately and go do something more productive. People were complaining about the medic kit because of it's lack of fire power (no grenades + 2 clips = a lot of pistol time). I found I usually had atleast 1 support if not 2 in my group simply because of the need for ammo and the advantage of smoke grenades. A support can continously throw smoke grenades if he switches back and forth from his ammo bag (and throws one down) to his smoke grenade. This ends up with a lot of smoke and 2 supports doing this adds into some intense CQB if done right.

I felt on larger maps that I was more rushed and it didn't slow down the pace of the game at all. During Mastuur and Dalian, I felt, because of the few CPs, that each position of cover was vital. This way, I'd move my troops to a certain spot..defend and gradually move in. This creates a slower pace game that I felt was what this tactical mode was suppose to do. On Zatar, I felt we just had to get to the flag, find cover, and work from there. Big maps aren't fun at all. Add that with the large ticket count and I'd rather have been playing server 1.

Make more 16player maps and I'll join again. Anymore testing air with 25 people on the server and I'll gladly go back to Server 1. The fact that we haven't even tried it out with 62/64 players simply means we don't know if a 32 player map would be good enough for the infrantry.

Just my $.02


EDIT: Reading over Perry's statement, I must say that the Mobile AA unit was much better then before. Major plus on that. The APC on Karkand (if you have an engineer) is extremely deadly because of the nature of the game. Pull up to the flag and kill 2-3 people and make the flag go white in a second. Their medics try and revive them and they go down and all of a sudden their team is pinned down with no spawn. I only got to use the APC at the end of Karkand, but it was deadly with Sid as my engineer. Maybe more then 1 AT on the other side would have prevented that though. =P

[asch]

Just to clarify, there were problems with the server configuration and not the mod that caused the ticket ratio to be way too high. This in turn made the rounds last longer than they should allowed for more player deaths. Typically this wouldn't happen.

We also were testing out maps that were larger than the player base. Remember, we were testing the maps as much as we were the new features. I do wish we could have gotten more players to join especially on a PW night.

Don't let the configuration of the server add negatively to the mod.

[CymBa]

For the most part I agree with Kilrogg. This was my first time playing the MOD and it was really good.
Not knowing where the enemy was led to some really hairy moments and I loved the tension and element of surprise. I also liked not having the enemy tags. Things did get a lil hairy with the reduced friendly tags distance esp when flying. You have to be almost on top of friendlies before their tags come up and its hard to see the uniforms while flying.

However there were a few things I think were a bit too much, I'll list them here:

[Increasing Spawn Timer ]
I understand the principle behind this, which is to punish you for dying in the first place but after a couple deaths it was taking up to 30-40 secs to spawn on some of the bigger maps. That sort of breaks the flow of the fight and I was spending more and more time just staring at the sky.

I agree with Kilrog on a possible solution for this . I think 3 secs is a bit harsh maybe 1 sec would be better and then cap it at 30 secs.

[Air Power]
Now I'm a known chopper whore but I'll try and keep this as objective as I can
I think the choppers were nerfed a bit too much. Again I understand the principle. They're supposed to be a support role not dominating the battlefield like they sometimes do in vanilla BF2. But I think some aspects went overboard.

I for one, strangely enough, I actually LIKE that fact that we're stuck in cockpit view now. Its more immersive and realistic and adds some tension of its own. It took me awhile to get used to the view. It also has the definate side effect of reducing the choppers fighting ability. I now have to depend on the gunner a lot more to spot targets and take them out because all I can see , esp in the Cobra is his big fat helmet The gunner also can't see infantry close under them because of the nose. So this is actually a fairly good nerf for choppers.

I also liked the slow repair/rearm times. It forces us out of battle for longer when we get damaged AND somewhat forces me to use my missiles more sparingly.. esp since I can't see where I'm shooting a lot of the time anywayz (DAMN HELMET!)

Now, I understand the principle behind increasing the spawn timer on the chopper. BUT I think 2 mins is a little long. THAT coupled with the increased lethality of the AA missiles AND the increasing spawn timer for dying REALLY kills the game for air crews. We just spend most of our time waiting ot respawn and then when we do , we still have to wait another minute and a half for the helo to respawn. Then as soon as we leave the pad we might get shot down by the enemy helo or a jet and have to go thru the WHOLE THING AGAIN. It really kills the vibe and it gets tired fast.

Its all these factors taken together that makes me think that choppers were nerfed too hard. I'm not saying that they're now WEAK... Nope, but the problem is we just spend way too much time twiddling our thumbs.. esp with the increasing spawn timer.

I would say drop chopper respawn times to 1 min; I think its 30 secs in Vanilla BF2. That coupled with the capped spawn timer should make things a lil less boring for the air crews. The reduced visibility in the cockpit already reduces our effectiveness a bit.

BTW I like the fact that jets have to land to reload. Should really slow down the attacks and will really show who are the skilled pilots
I think that move alone is enough w/o them having such a long spawn time as well. Jet pilots are ppl too

[More Powerful AT]
I don't think I agree with this one. Tanks are supposed to be feared esp if u're not prepared for it and even in Vanilla BF2 vehicles don't last too long in battle. Making them even easier to kill is just really limiting their usefulness esp coupled with the locking of the vehicles to a team on some maps.


[Commander Assets]
Again I understand the principle here. But I think removing artillery completely uot of the game is a bit much. While I was playing I realised that the mod really favours the defenders. They can lay ambushes and even when they get shot they have quite a while before they 'die' and are therefore revivable. But there were a few cases where the defenders were so well entrenched and sufficient vehicles were not around to breakthru (because they were locked). At this point a well placed artillery strike would soften them up to faciliate the attack. I mean in IRL most attacks are prefaced by artillery anywayz.

My suggestion would be to bring back artillery but to double or even triple the respawn time on it. That would force commanders to really choose when to use it as opposed to spamming it all the time like now. But still make it available to help break tough defenses.

I also think the scan should be brought back but it should be given the same treatment as the artillery in terms of reload time. In actual battle no commander goes in totally blind but he doesn't have near real time info. By lengthening the recharge significantly again he'd have to choose very carefully when to employ it. You could also limit how long the enemies remain onscreen. That'll give the commander a 'snapshot' of the situation but a lot could change by the time it becomes available again. It would also give the commander something other than just dropping supplies like it is now.

I agree with the UAV being left out tho. If you want realtime updates.. depend on the squads and spotting for that.

As an added bonus it gives SpecOps squads something to do again. Them keeping assets down will have an actual impact on the game. Because even if the assets are repaired right away with a crate, they still have to go thru the recharge time and that will give the team a chance to go forward undetected and unimpeded by artillery for quite awhile. A good squad could keep those assetts down indefinately but at least it would require human intervention to pull off which is what we like.

[TAGS]
I also liked not having the enemy tags. Things did get a lil hairy with the reduced friendly tags distance esp when flying. You have to be almost on top of friendlies before their tags come up and its hard to see the uniforms while in the air.


[Conclusion]
Overall I like the mod. I think its great fun , just needs a lil tweaking to make it fun for everyone. I love the smoke grenades. I love how the various support classes are even more important now. One thing I've noticed is that ppl tend to turtle more now. But with the artillery's help that could change.

Great Job Duke

[SgtDuke]

Originally Posted by Kilrogg

- Increasing respawn timer. I understand the concept and it's a good idea but it ends up hindering the gameplay instead of adding to the realism/intensity of the battle. There should either be a cap on the amount of extra time penalty you get or it should be 1 second per death not 3 per.

I agree. The current settings might be OK for a time in the future when we've fully evolved to the style of play required to do well in this mod. But right now, when we've just started and are playing pretty similarly to default BF2, it's much too brutal. In the next release I think we'll have 2 second increments and a max of 60 seconds (30 critical + 30 killed (after 15 deaths)).

Originally Posted by Kilrogg

- Wake Island needs some adjusting. 12 vs 12 was pretty terrible for USMC. It was extremely hard to make it to any CP because of lack of air support and abundance of jeeps (ie .50 cals) and AA and transport chopper for China.

Also agreed. I was thinking that USMC would be able to do well by making wide flanking moves to the far north and south, surprising China in the back of the island, but that proved to be difficult, and the ticket bleed during the long time it takes to make those maneuvers really hurt USMC. We'll definitely work on balancing the new versions of Wake better for the next release.

[Arf]

I kind of liked the mod.

Infantry combat I think is better. It was a far more interesting game when we spammed smoke to feint or flank instead of spamming grenades. I liked not being able to see enemy tags but not being able to see friendly tags was kind of a problem when everyone is the same shadow. I did notice that Medics seemed to be overplayed. I think it might be a good idea to reduce Medic firepower by giving them Carbines and giving their rifles to ATs; ATs need some loving because now when they kill a tank they don't do much for quite a while. I think that would give teams more incentive to diversify as they could get a firepower advantage over a team of medics.

The AA was much better. I mistook Perry's Mobile for an APC and tried to strafe it. He put me in my place and that's a huge improvement over vanilla. Otherwise I really hate landing. I don't mind having to strafe things instead of bombing but when I get into a dog fight it's a huge problem because once I break off and try to land I make myself an free kill. So all you have to do in a dog fight is evade and then wait for them to go resupply. Then the other jet is gone for more then enough time for you to resupply. Ontop of that the F-35 refuels in half the time because it can hover. I very much hate landing in this game.

[Beatnik]

Overall I was really impressed with the almost every change I saw made. Big improvements that stood out for me:
-Smoke nades. Lot's of 'em. It's a beautiful thing to use for cover, a feint (as arf said), or just to confuse the opp team.
-No enemy tags. Finally no one on the op for can shout 'Beatnik is hiding over there!', until after they kill me. lol But if we could improve the visibility of friendly tags a bit, that'd be great. I almost killed a few squadmembers at mid-range because I didn't see tags.
-Increased spawn timer. GOOD thing. Even when I was waiting around. The increasing timer is meant to disincent overly aggressive attacks, not punish you for dying that particular time. I think played a little more aggressive than they will play after we become more comfortable with the mod. I think a ceiling of ~1 min. sounds reasonable though.
-The vehicle changes made were all in the right direction and well thought out, as far as a ground pounder could tell. Nerf them a little, give us a little way to at least scare them off, and it's a whole new game. Especially on Oman.

Areas for (slight) improvement:
-Flag radius needs to be a bit larger. Maybe slightly larger or slightly smaller than the default. Not sure, but as small as it was, 4 guys could be taken out with 1 C4.
-Finagling the ticket amounts for the # of players in later versions will come, I'm sure. Like the issue perry talked about on Wake. We were set at 100 tickets with a big bleed to take the island. The game was done in 10 min due to bleed. But that's a pretty minor adjustment (as well as a server side adj).
-Possibly having some kind of CO assets in very limited supply/respawn config. Like 3 uses per match/2 min recharge. As to which assets, I have no idea. Probably no UAV.

Those were the few notes I wrote down. Overall I found it very playable and extremely fun. I told someone it kind of felt like playing BF2 on the TG server the first time, all over again. Just seeing what the game...could be, and how intense it could be. Very fine work you guys have done here. +rep to you guys.

[StrikeFear]

Medic kit - no 'nades, 2 clips - makes them a little too ineffective in combat.

Jets - landing for every reload - there's got to be a better solution. It was just horrible. If you looked at our scores, they were ridiculous. I think I had 12 points.
I'd rather have a 3-min respawn timer, but get a reload with a fly-over - maybe make me fly over twice.

Once we've dropped bombs, we just don't have much more to do...

Even if you disagree with that, the obvious thought that I'm sure went through every pilot's mind was, "I could go camp their airstrip, and take 'em out when they land. Sitting ducks."
Our side chose not to do that, for obvious reasons, and I think the MEC did also, cuz I never got attacked while landed on the Essex.
But you can see that having to land for every reload is just begging to create landing-campers.

Otherwise, FANTASTIC MOD. VERY FUN. Well done, y'all!

[Shiner]

Great test session last night.

I liked many of the changes.. smokes the best of all, but agree that the limit of 2 clips on the medic is pretty harsh.

I noticed the improved AA and really loved it, but with the same old problem that it tends to hit friendly's more than it should considering they aren't in my LOS when I fire.

I led one of the two full squads on Wake and we had a bit of a rough time getting the USMC off the snide. I thank my squad kilrog, el_grande etc for bearing with me while I tried different strats. IMHO there are too many 50 cals for the defenders and/or the MEC doesn't need a transport chopper. As kilrogg mentioned our only seroius option was to go heavy AT to deal with the vehicle threat, but that left us with no really effective method to clear the infantry or defend against the swift counter-attack of the chopper. Hats off to the MEC who played the map well.

Once USMC had a flag the map turned pretty fun as a more infantry oriented battle raged between the airfield and the north.

[jepzilla]

Originally Posted by Arf

Infantry combat I think is better. It was a far more interesting game when we spammed smoke to feint or flank instead of spamming grenades. I liked not being able to see enemy tags but not being able to see friendly tags was kind of a problem when everyone is the same shadow. I did notice that Medics seemed to be overplayed. I think it might be a good idea to reduce Medic firepower by giving them Carbines and giving their rifles to ATs; ATs need some loving because now when they kill a tank they don't do much for quite a while. I think that would give teams more incentive to diversify as they could get a firepower advantage over a team of medics.

That's a neat idea. I like the idea of giving medics carbines instead or rifles. Changing the AT weapon would be useful too, although I think a carbine also (not a rifle).

With regards to jets, I agree about them being over-nerfed. You drop two bombs (which you'll be lucky to get a kill with) and then have to spend a minute reloading. On the other hand, a very small flag radius makes it really easy to wipe out an entire squad by strafing a flag that's just gone neutral.

[AzrealDarkmoon]

The long respawn time hurts, really make the game slow and in a bad way. Towards the end of Zatar I realized I wasn't having fun and it was getting late so I hopped off.

Armor is overpowering, especially when there are LOADs of it. On zatar at one time my squad had a tank 2 apcs and 1 AA. The airfield was pretty secure, generally the only time it was capped was by helo capping it.

Not bad but honestly I didn't have the "fun" factor.

Az

[Preston85]

Originally Posted by StrikeFear

Medic kit - no 'nades, 2 clips - makes them a little too ineffective in combat.

Please remember why they were nerfed, there were 2 or 3 medics per squad in the previous test, because they were a effective combat kit, you can heal yourself, revive and heal teammates for instant backup.

I think once people realise that medics are meant to be healing/reviving others and not fighting except in extreme cases they will pick there targets more carefully. Concentrating on giving teamates medpacks and reviving fallen teammates after picking off the enemy who killed your teammate.

Maybe a single grenade and a extra mag will make them acceptable without making them lemmings.

[DrunkenSoul]

Great mod. Before we start making comments we must remember about the ticket issue and the amount of people we had playing on maps like zatar and oman. 30 people on a 64 player map is not fun no matter if its a mod or vanilla bf2.

With the medic ammo clips/respawn issue. It shows the importance of having a medic class not being on the front lines as they are low on ammo and must revive teammates. If you just rush into a flag without thinking, then you will have no chance for a revive, but if your squad thinks and scopes out the area before moving in, you have a better chance of living and making it easier for you medic to revive you without getting caught in crossfire. Even with 2 medic your squad can still operate efficently with a support resupplying ammo.

As said before the ticket bleed issue on wake needs to be fixed. Besides that, the mod looks great so far and cant wait for more updates. The maps that were the most enjoyable (from the ones I played) were 16 player Mashtuur, 16 player wake, and 32 player Karkand.

P.S. Can a smoke gernade do damage? Me and Santa were waiting for the attack heli on oman and he threw a smoke gernade at my body and i lost 1/3 of my health. Is this supposed to happen?

[Kilrogg]

Originally Posted by StrikeFear

Medic kit - no 'nades, 2 clips - makes them a little too ineffective in combat.

Jets - landing for every reload - there's got to be a better solution. It was just horrible. If you looked at our scores, they were ridiculous. I think I had 12 points.
I'd rather have a 3-min respawn timer, but get a reload with a fly-over - maybe make me fly over twice.

Once we've dropped bombs, we just don't have much more to do...

Even if you disagree with that, the obvious thought that I'm sure went through every pilot's mind was, "I could go camp their airstrip, and take 'em out when they land. Sitting ducks."
Our side chose not to do that, for obvious reasons, and I think the MEC did also, cuz I never got attacked while landed on the Essex.
But you can see that having to land for every reload is just begging to create landing-campers.

Otherwise, FANTASTIC MOD. VERY FUN. Well done, y'all!

The 2 clips for medic is a problem yes but no frag nades is a good thing. In this game frag grenades are simply too hard to see/hear during combat, I'm getting better at seeing them and getting away but it's still too hard most of the time and they end up just being spammed for cheap kills on vanilla bf2.

Lots of awesome squad vs squad standoffs on server 1 where both squads are behind their respective cover just end up becoming frag nade wars where on TMod the smoke can be used to flank/feint etc.

Basically what I'm saying is grenades should stay as they are now. Less frags = good