Al Basrah tweaks

[Ghost1800]

I've been a big fan of Al Basrah since .6 and while .6 and .7 were slightly lenient on the British, it seems that .75 has flipped that situation around. I've been waiting a bit to see if it was just me, but I've found that around 3 out of 4 times Insurgents win the round while only losing 2 or 3 caches. Now I'm not going to say that I know what exactly to do to fix this, but here are some things I think could help the problem. Keep in mind these are all separate suggestions, they are not all supposed to be considered as a whole, but more of a 'pick, choose, offer new option' kind of deal. Please also note that since I have yet to play a whole round of Operation Archer, I cannot offer a valid opinion on the balance of that map.

1. Remove ticket Penalties on Warriors, Scimitars, and/or the Merlin.

These things seem to just drop like flies and the 10 tickets per loss has frequently resulted in a round with a time limit of 2+ hours ending in roughly 30 minutes with around 50 deaths on the British side. This may be in part to operator error, but this basically means that 2-4 guys on a team of 30 can doom the entire team to failure. It made sense in .6 to have this penalty as the Warriors acted as a mobile spawn... now I'm stuck wishing that our team would just hide them in the back corner of airport to keep them from being blown up. I have no problem with the tank having a ticket penalty attached to it, it is a very heavy asset that is hard to destroy when used properly.

2. Removal of the GP-25 from the cell leader kit or implementing a minimum distance

I have no idea how, but I've seen this being used by a large portion of the insurgents team despite being essentially an officers kit in areas of procurement. This kit is constantly being used in close quarters as a guaranteed kill much like the RPG. This is also kind of a suggestion for grenadier kits in general. Would it be possible to require the grenade to reach a certain distance in order to detonate? I think the M203 requires 30 meters, would it be possible to look into finding the distance for all current grenadier weaponry and implementing a minimum range? (also, I've taken a look around and from what I can tell the GP-25 doesn't even fit on an AK47)

3. More caches on the map at a time

I understand that in .6 and .7 having all of the caches on the field at once gave too much power to the British. Being able to avoid all contact with the insurgents and eliminate the caches by random search was realistic, but there are currently too few people available on a server for the insurgents to mount a proper defense of that many targets. However, it also became obvious that the heaviest casualties to the British occurred when the Insurgents had only a few locations to defend. With the 3 cache limit currently, it seems that the insurgents not only have enough people to effectively blockade all paths to the cache (which is even worse when 2 caches are together), they also have enough to randomly search the city and pin down the British before they can even get close to a cache. Adding 1 or maybe even 2 caches to the map at a time would give the brits a reason to actually search the map instead of having to go for the marked caches that have 30 people guarding them.

4. Remove ammo resupply from Insurgent rallies.

This would force at least a few insurgents to return to ammo caches for ammo, giving a chance to observant Allied forces to narrow the search down or even stalk a target all the way to a cache. It would also force Insurgents to disengage completely from a fight before going for ammo, encouraging (at least I hope) a more hit-and-run mentality for them.

5. Remove all base kits except Cell Leader, Insurgent, and Civilian.

In return each cache would supply several weapons instead of just one, and ambusher and war vet would likely be put into the mix of pickup kits (maybe even buffed a little). This would force insurgents to go to a cache or rally to pickup a weapon, caches being more likely not to have been picked clean.

6. Reduce the effectiveness of Molotov's on armored vehicles

I have no idea what the reasoning with these weapons are... It takes 4-5 seconds to kill a soldier, 20-30 seconds to kill a Land Rover or Support Truck, and barely a second to kill a Warrior, Scimitar, or Challenger. Maybe I'm just not getting something here but I don't see how a little flammable alcohol is going to kill off a vehicle that can withstand much more intimidating weapons. I've heard the argument that if they were thrown into the crew areas of the vehicle it would do some serious damage... yet who would drive into a hostile insurgency in a heavily populated area and not lock the doors/hatches?

Please remember these are not intended to be suggested in such a way that they would all take effect (that would suck for insurgents), it's just a couple things that I think if a couple were implemented would help keep Al Basrah much less frustrating and hopefully more enjoyable. Feel free to add other suggestions.

[Grizzly]

You bring some valid points and I especially agree on bringing back all the caches, it adds some strategy for the Insurgents on which caches are more important and easier to defend. Also I would'nt mind seeing the Insurgent side spawning all as civies and having the caches actually be of some importance, make all weapons pick ups and have them in an actual cache. Make them vital for the Insurgents give them a better reason to stay close and defend and make ambushes.

[AirCasper]

^^;; you must hate the insurgents


Not one of your suggestions got against the British; who are more armed, and can attack at a distance.

personally I like playing defense with insurgents

how ever adding more caches at a time will result in a quicker game.

Rarely do you find a squad defending each cache as it is now! which means more caches undefended = pro for brits.



I honestly think the map is great how it is now

[jayceon515]

You don't like the Brits getting their asses kicked so often? That's exactly why I love Basrah so much.
In 0.6 it sucked big time in 0.708 it got a bit better an now in 0.756 it's perfect. There's no need to change anything. When there were all caches on the map the UK team mostly won without firing a singe shot which is not exactly what a FPS is about.

The only thing I would like to see fixed are those stupid molotovs. How realistic it is to destroy an undamaged tank with a molotov in under 2 seconds? That's some serious bullshit.

[[R-DEV]Rudd]

Originally Posted by Ghost1800

4. Remove ammo resupply from Insurgent rallies.

This would force at least a few insurgents to return to ammo caches for ammo, giving a chance to observant Allied forces to narrow the search down or even stalk a target all the way to a cache. It would also force Insurgents to disengage completely from a fight before going for ammo, encouraging (at least I hope) a more hit-and-run mentality for them.

6. Reduce the effectiveness of Molotov's on armored vehicles

Atlantafalcons AFAIK is gonna fix the molotov problem, hopefully for 0.8

and I fully agree with number 4, and have mixed feelings about the rest. The need for testing is clearly indicated.

[AirCasper]

i think we all agree about the Molotov

(maybe a nice new model for it while on the topic of molotovs *bats eyes* lol)

seriously though, I can understand a Molotov messing up everyone in the back of a Supply Truck (got a few fully loaded a few times)... but Armor... no





as for the Resupply on Rally. Good point, brit's can't resupply off their rally points; just as long as we can still get ammo from the cache (taking that out wouldnt make any sense at all)

[Zekeadalic]

I think that the problem comes from another point. I'm a fan of Al Basrah, too, but when playing as insurgent, I see that a lot of people didnt ever read the PR manual.

When I discover British Troops beeing a civilian, always the first enemy shoots me. In fact they may only knife me. And there are only few players who know this rule from my point of view.

But I know the problems of the british troops as well. The civilian looks much like one or two other armed characters. And if you dont want your APC been blown up by an RPG, you have to fire as soon as you can. So theres no time to decide if the bad guy is a civilian or an armed insurgent.

Now I know the game only from 0.7 to 0.75, but I know from Trailers and ingame videos, that the civilians originally were green. Why has this easy-to-see hint gone?

[at1as]

Originally Posted by Ghost1800

6. Reduce the effectiveness of Molotov's on armored vehicles

I have no idea what the reasoning with these weapons are... It takes 4-5 seconds to kill a soldier, 20-30 seconds to kill a Land Rover or Support Truck, and barely a second to kill a Warrior, Scimitar, or Challenger. Maybe I'm just not getting something here but I don't see how a little flammable alcohol is going to kill off a vehicle that can withstand much more intimidating weapons.

Molotov cocktail doesn't include any alcohol at all. More likely it's a gasoline / some petroleum-derived liquid made. So when it hits the APC the liquid can penetrate the engine area of APC or some vital part of it and make some serious damage.

And i don't think there is any imbalance on the map. As soon as British team is orginised, has a good commander, it is very easy for them to win. It's like the only condition for Brits to win on that map. Just stay orginised that's it.

[[R-DEV]Rudd]

Originally Posted by at1as

Molotov cocktail doesn't include any alcohol at all. More likely it's a gasoline / some petroleum-derived liquid made. So when it hits the APC the liquid can penetrate the engine area of APC or some vital part of it and make some seriuos damage.

AFAIK, vehicles like the warrior are sealed against such attacks unless the hatches are open, thus the molotovs should actually do little to no damage.

as I have already said, atlantafalcons has stated he is on the case.

[jayceon515]

Originally Posted by Zekeadalic

Now I know the game only from 0.7 to 0.75, but I know from Trailers and ingame videos, that the civilians originally were green. Why has this easy-to-see hint gone?

Because not every civilian is a homosexual. Apart from that this is a realism mod and insurgents in reality are civilian looking guys with guns.