Terminal Boy

Now a Mortarman class would be fun...

ChernobylKinsman

0.7 maybe..

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"It's nothing to do with Stalker, really"

Morganan

Look over the history of the games in the battlefield genre from 1942 until now, it's funny how you see almost the same evolution in most mod's as well.

Artillery used to be a vehicle that could be used by anyone, but it was removed due to how easy it was to maul an entire team with it and replaced with mortors in Vietnam. In Bf2 arty was only given to the commander and put on a timer, so indirect fire was basically a thing of the past.

The Missile-jeeps in Vietnam initially only got lock on ground vehicles, you couldnt make it fire at infantry or air. This was changed for gameplay reasons eventually where it could fire at air as well, but it wouldn't get "lock" on infantry so thus couldn't be fired at them. The VC infantry carried rocket was really an anti-air rocket you could fire at tanks. It only got lock on vehicles with someone in the 1st position of the vehicle. It would fly somewhat straight if the rocket didn't get lock on anything, but it was quite useless vs. infantry.

Ammo boxes were plentiful back in 1942, which just begged for people to take AT kits or assault kits and grenade/rocket spam, especially on maps like Stalingrad (a.k.a. Spammingrad), Omaha or Berlin.. Then they added in medical boxes in Vietnam, which they saw was a huge mistake as it detracted from gameplay. For Bf2 they forced people to rearm off supply crates or from infantry playing the support class and players to use medic's again.

Fast forward to PR:

Removing arty on most maps, unsure why, but that means basically no indirect fire.
Making the Grenidier class and AT kits available as a kit request instead of as part of a normal kit allocation. This is being done IMO to remove the "spammyness" of these weapons. Of course that wont end up being the case, but it is a noble effort anyway.
Minimizing the commander by forcing him to hope he can find people willing to be his engineer servants to even actually be a commander. Adding in what will end up being mostly useless buildings CO's can place, and engineers/riflemen can build. Also adding sandbags, another useless thing. These initially were reported to cost your team "tickets" to build, making them cost-prohibitive in most situations. (I have no clue as to the exact costs, or if they even still cost tickets to make) This of course means both sides will want to have specialized "asset hunting squads" which only detracts from gameplay on pubbie servers.

History repeating itself? Maybe

Finestyle

I've tested the BF2 model of the Javelin for a tournament mod... It's one heck of a nice piece of kit. I really wish PR would give it to the H-AT instead of the SRAW (I think it might be "freeware", but I'm unsure), especially with the HUGH maps which we'll soon be seeing. Because of the "Top Attack" mode it has quite a large range on it, because of the arc needed to rise vertically and fall onto the target, so it can be a little overkill on what you would call a standard large BF2 map because it auto locks. Unfortunately the "direct attack" mode on the model we were testing for the mini mod was a little buggy and we didn't have time to fix it before the tourney campaign was due to start, which was a shame. Hopefully we'll get it in next time

But yeah, the Javelin for BF2 does indeed exist... and its real nice

Some people have also mentioned wanting mortars in PR... well we did manage to get them in the tourney mod and I think as a limited request kit for PR they would work quite well too... ours have a range of 500M, so something like that on the newer, larger PR maps wouldn't be too overkill, I don't think. Again this model may be "freeware" also.

A bit "off topic" but seem as though people mentioned them I figured I speak up about my experience with them.

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Morganan

Are the "spotting" mechanics for mortors/artillery still in the game? With the larger map-sizes I think 1000 meters would be a decent starting point for mortor range but without being able to spot for indirect fire, I wonder in the end how usefull it would really be...

Root

They want to include their own version of arty. I can't remember the specifics but I'm pretty sure a search of Fuzzheads posts will turn up the answer. I think it's because there's changes they want to make which simply can't be done using EAs artillery.

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Sabre_Tooth_Tigger

They have this class in 0.6 but they dont yet fire anything

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RazersEdge

I can't wait to see an active Mortar ingame, I do think that they should bring back the artillery guns, like the EA type artillery guns should be player controlled in my opinion. We need a weapon that can keep up the fire and provide serious assistance to fireteams that are experiencing heavy enemy resistance.

And yeah... because of the weapons differences USMC is at a major disadvantage infantry wise, so why not add the Javelin in? It'd at least make our lives easier on USMC because we're already at a bit of a disadvantage. A top attack variant would just be beautiful.

ChernobylKinsman

That's what it comes to for me, I don't see how (as was mentioned) it could possibly be considered real world tactics to shoot a $400 rocket to kill a lone soldier when you have a rifle. Since I read it that's been the main driving force behind the way I play on the PR server (well, I didn't do it before that either, but it was more my innate sense of what I personally considered realistic AND sportsmanlike behaviour).

If I'm misinterpreting the spirit of the rule, I'd love to be told so I can STFU and not bother reporting it (I had planned on looking at the BR files that sadly I can't get atm for some pretty poor instances of this on PW night).

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Morganan

That's really the crux of it, realistic and sportsmanlike. The two generally aren't very condusive to being used in the same sentance. You can look at almost any area of gameplay and come up with different tactics based on either sportsmanship or realism. "Fair" when looked at from a realism aspect is quite different when looked at from a sportsmanship aspect. I think right here is where the crux of the disagreements on rules interpretations come from.

ChernobylKinsman

That is true, but I thought sportsman like behaviour was also a byword for TG, hence the UCB rule and various gentlemans agreements (which, of course, don't mean much to the populace at large)

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asch

I'll be putting a post together shortly that describes the use of xAT. Hopefully that will clear up any questions.

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Betterdeadthanred

I know its not good practice to use an AT weapon against infantry, but if you are scanning the horizon for tanks and see a full squad heading in your general direction, don't try and tell me you wouldn't take the shot. Don't think I am defending the tactic, it is very irritating to get HAT sniped but I wouldn't say that it is entirely unjustifiable.

ChernobylKinsman

Thanks asch.

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Sabre_Tooth_Tigger

0.6 restricts HAT. Theres only 1 zoom and it takes longer to reload and fire I think

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