PR SOP Suggestions

[Foxoq]

Well things are different in PR, no doubt about it. Sometimes this may require new standard-operating-procedures to play as a coherent team with new assets available to your team. I have a few that come to mind, but feel free to draft up any ideas that you feel should become a standard on tomorrow's battlefields as well.


Air Support - Marking Friendlies

On maps like Al Basrah, flags can change hands quickly and thus are often occupied by both friendlies and hostiles. On this map in particular, Air Support is the USMC advantage, and must be utilized to a full potential. Information relayed through the SL to the CO to the air SL on target information is often shaky at best, especially if there are multiple targets. SL's please mark your position with green smoke that the officer kit is equipped with, identifying you as a friendly to your air assets. Make sure to do this before the asset moves in for the fire mission. Helo gunners, confirm a direct visual on the (green) smoke with the standard cockpit view before switching into the black/white gun view. Then continue the fire mission aware of friendlies. CO, it is your job to make sure all friendly squads in the area mark themselves if air is going to be overhead. Obviously this will be easier to carry out with the patch that will make all officer kits unlimited in their request time. (ie: you can request anytime.)

Eg:

CO: OK, insurgents are pressing hard, air is coming in. Squads 3 and 4, mark with green smoke.

SL (3, 4): Roger, marking.

CO: Roger, air moving in.

[thebleakaffinity]

Why is marking necessary when the minimap instantly informs you of friendly positions?

[TG_JBRanger]

Because the minimap can zoom in only so close. Say insurgents are on one side of the mosque and friendlies on other. Marking with green smoke can let the pilots know from which direction to make their approach.

[Foxoq]

The B/W view of the gun obscures the minimap as well as making friendlies and allies indistinguishable. To try and manage positions of friendlies and provide accurate fire in the same pass is a hard thing to do.

[BigGaayAl]

I have another proposition.

Consider the back flag on ALL maps for both teams as a ucb, whether it is indicated with the red sign on the map or not.

I'll explain my reasoning.

Yesterday I played a round on greasy mullet. When I spawned in, the first thing I saw was the A10 bombing our two mec jets.
Then the jet continued to do this for 10 minutes. I spoke of it in chat, admins knew, but no action was taken, although they did use chat to urge the pilots to change their behaviour.
This totally destroyed the game imo, because we weren't able to play the map as intended. I couldn't even grab the AA, as the A10 kept jets and ALL ARMOUR down. By the time you got your kit you were a soaring through the air as a corps.
The people in these jets kept saying "you should grab the AA".....
In the end we kind of made it a good game, because we moved out on foot, and Rapaki was commanding.

Another thing is when squads attack your last flag, then lose their back flags, but they just stay there and rape the spawn for 10 min. Even worse, sometimes a whole squad just goes to that last flag to camp it, regardless of flags. Currently all this behaviour is allowed. Now I can understand moving a squad up to disrupt supply lines. I cannot understand moving it into the enemy's home flag to keep all the armour down.

I believed it to be non-TG-style when dark viper was kept on the ground by a bf2c guy bombing him on the runway in kubra dam in the first scrim.

I do feel we are in need of new SOP's in light of the new gamemode aasv2.

[Root]

The team should be focussing on 3 areas :

1) The target flag(s) at hand.
2) The last flags taken (defend them or lose them).
3) The flag(s) that come after the flag(s) at hand (sneaking a fast strike squad in works).

A fast random / start of game raid on the OpFor airbase has tactical merit, but continuous attacks just sap all the fun from the game.

Originally Posted by thebleakaffinity

Why is marking necessary when the minimap instantly informs you of friendly positions?

Ask the A10 pilot who took my entire squad out trying to help us. It can get quite messy at some of the flags, with lots of squads trying to flank and counter-flank. We definitely need to adopt a SOP to cut down on blue fire.

[Legato895]

al i know what your saying man, but isn't keeping the opponent's assets down the point of the game? i say so anyway

the only thing that comes to mind as a current direct violation of SOP that i think needs to be changed is the nature of insurgent warfare. i think we should un-ban jihad jeeps and suicide tactics. not only does al basarah already provide a suicide rig but technical and dirt bikes are also prime game for a good IED or two.

the nature of the insurgent team is to use whatever tactic necessary to win. while firing a AT rocket at a person as any other team might leave a bad taste in my mouth, insurgents specifically have a class that ONLY has rockets and those are used in anti personal scenarios quite frequently...

so other than that tangent yeah... i am all for suicide tactics as insurgents (NOTE MEC)

[blackmain]

Cobra pilots should be responsible for getting there gunners on target imo. I was a pilot for a cobra and with my directions the gunner managed to rack up a ton of kills with only 3-4 TK's the entire match. But the pilot needs to have VIOP to be able to make sure the gunner is looking where he needs to be. The pilot still has his mini map so he is responsible for that gunners behavior.

-Pfc.Rapaki

[Skurge9631]

I completely agree with Rapaki about gunners. Before people start saying 'it's not so easy', I'll just mention I am the gunner we was speaking of. I'm sure however, that anyone who takes the time to come to these forums isn't one of the few idiots that come on the server every now and then. About the suicide bombing though.... would be interesting in my opinion. The Insurgents do actually have vehicles built for it, but if allowed, would only be so for the Al Basrah map. Again, it would simply be fun. Also, a good reflex test for all those seasoned tankers.

[Legato895]

Originally Posted by Skurge9631

I completely agree with Rapaki about gunners. Before people start saying 'it's not so easy', I'll just mention I am the gunner we was speaking of. I'm sure however, that anyone who takes the time to come to these forums isn't one of the few idiots that come on the server every now and then. About the suicide bombing though.... would be interesting in my opinion. The Insurgents do actually have vehicles built for it, but if allowed, would only be so for the Al Basrah map. Again, it would simply be fun. Also, a good reflex test for all those seasoned tankers.

let me reaffirm that i ONLY condone suicide tactics on insurgent maps (currently only al basarah)

[asch]

Let's get this thread back on topic of SOP suggestions please.

[tHa_KhAn]

I agree with Al. I believe I was on the round he is referring. There were the jets bombing the jet spawns and armor spawns and a infantry group camping the helo spawns. Dispite losing all but their air base flag they continued to do this. It's one thing when it is the flag of contention it's another to do it for kills sake. The real tactical edge would have been assisting the team take back flags not padding stats while people wait 3 minutes to get another pilot kit. Which brings up another problem. I know it is in teh change for officer, but crewman and pilot should have a zero spawn time in case of base rape. It's hard to defend yourself when the dedicated aircraft squad can't get an appropriate kit for the AA or other vehicles to fight back.

[BigGaayAl]

Originally Posted by Legato895

al i know what your saying man, but isn't keeping the opponent's assets down the point of the game? i say so anyway

Please don't use that argument. It was used to justify any behaviour BUT teamkilling in vanilla bf2.

Keeping the assets down, is part of the game yeah, but I can assure you it will not be part of the game I will be playing in the future playing. I'd rather play single player than against such tactics. Heck I'd rather play cards or something.

Canasta anyone?

*edit*In reply to john's comment, don't want to clutter the thread:

I know that the current sop's allow all this. Rally points are a totally unrelated aspect of the game to what I described. You can respond in many ways to someone at your rally point.

I am having trouble accepting this sort of gaming. It is totally opposite to previous rules on TG, and all this, just because there is no longer a red circle and bar over the map icon? I cannot see the reasoning behind this.

I am happy to accept any decision of admins on this matter, but I doubt I will stay in a round of greasy mullet when I got bombed once on the runway while it is not in contention.

[John CANavar]

Just want to add that attacking to an enemy air base doesnt seem to be related to SOPs. It is a tactic. Just like "attacking UCB" tactic. Well, for the latter we have rules. You cannot attack enemy UCB on TG servers. But for the other bases, even if they are not in HQ order list, we dont have a rule. And at this point, I dont think we need one.

I agree with Al on one thing. I rarely use or dont use this tactic at all. But if someone uses it, we cannot issue a warning/kick. It is as valid as destroying enemy artillery. It is your team's responsibility to neutralize the force attacking to your assets. If you cannot get cooperation from your team and getting killed again and again, consider spawning somewhere else.

Same thing goes to "campers". Lets say enemy found your Rally Point and instead of destroying it, they are camping around to get kills. Your options:

a) spawn elsewhere and create a new spawn point
b) spawn on current RP and try to eliminate camper enemy. Make them sorry for not destroying your PR. Make them RIP and then tea bag... Release the "Have you just camped my RP?" pressure. Just watch the language

But do not complain or expect admin warning/kick/ban. Afterall, you have options and control the situation.

Balance is a totally different thing. If you cannot defend yourself against air force and a jet bomber can simply dominate and ruin the experience for others, it is a mod balance issue. If that's the case, report it and admins may remove the map from rotation if they agree that there is a clear balance problem (Personally, I think PoE2 has serious air force imbalance issues). With long vehicle spawn times in PR, I didnt see a problem so far. My only request from developers is to force jets to land for rearming.

[Foxoq]

John what about when you have only one spawn point because your forward points were blown up, and the enemy decides to spawn camp you repeatedly instead of capping the flags that are your objective, it is frustrating to say the least. I have to agree mostly with Al on this one.