20 suggestions after a weekend of playing way too much squad

[Laki]

FREINDY WALL OF TEXT INCOMING! GET INTO COVER! 

I love the new ammo system. It really makes it possible to starve out a heavily fortified FOB if the enemy is unable to keep supplies flowing in. I find myself taking my squad to disrupt supplies and cutting off reinforcements more often than going directly in to the meat grinder that is a HAB attack, and If my squad succeeds it means the FOB will get starved of ammo and my team can move in and destroy it. I think this strategic level of play is what I love most about squads gameplay right now. For me it has never been the kills, or score, but the slow play of trying to stack the odds against the enemy team by denying enemy recourses, splitting their efforts and keeping my squad alive. At the end of the round the stat I rate my success as a squad leader is the amount of casualties taken, haven’t managed to pull off a clean sheet yet, but that’s the dream/challenge. (And for those you you how read this as me playing as a behind the lines commando unit. You are wrong. I usually play really close to the objectives, but with a mindset of controlling enemy movement, supplies and drawing their attention to make room for my team to move in rather than trying to go for the kills or caps myself, usually every other squad is rushing into cap already). I really like the change that anybody can revive, cause it keeps more players on their feet actually playing the game and contributing rather than in “hold spawns” loop, watching the map.

 

I made some notes for suggestions/ideas while playing way too much squad this weekend. Hoping for feedback.

 

Bugs:

1.) BUG! My keyboard layout/language keeps changing at seemingly random. It’s key under the escape key that I have bound to command map and it keeps changing from § to ‘ to ö. Strangely § and ' are keys that are in that location in some keyboard layout, but ö is on the other side of the board in my native Finnish layout. Still trying to figure out what causes this, but it seems to happen most frequently when entering/exiting a vehicle and placing a rally/buildable. This bug is also present in Post Scriptum so it could be a bug in the engine? Sometimes F1 also gets randomly assigned to § , ‘ or ö

Map:

2.) Hold for map keybind. This would be such a big quality of life improvement for me, since I keep checking the map constantly, I hope it could make more players more map aware and help with getting more accurate enemy markers on the map. It should work like any the hold to bind, so map is only open for as long as you keep pressing the button

 

3.) I’am not a big fan of the UI for marking enemies on the map. Would rather have a radial menu on the map (It used to be a radial menu?). Also would love to be able to mark anything from the SL radial menu. Maybe have the middle “point of interest” button could be a kind of sub menu that you can cycle with the mouse wheel with all possible markers available. Also having the buttons in “mark enemy” submenu cycle with mouse wheel. The mark enemies menu arrangement feels kind of wonky for me at the moment. Most of the time I need to mark enemies quickly, but in the menu the 12 to 3  o'clock position that I hover my mouse over when entering the menu is for marking a FOB, which is the marker I use the least. I would suggest a new button placement, with mouse wheel functionally to scroll tough every marker of that type, in a clockwise order starting from 12 as follows: Infantry, armor, FOB, vehicle. And the middle of the mark enemy submenu we could have (with mouse wheel scrolling) all of the request markers.

 

4.) I would love to be able to place lines and arrows on the map. I don’t want to be able to draw on the map, because public servers are a thing, but to be able place attack arrow and defend lines to help me better coordinate my squad and team. These would only be accessible trough command map. The interface could work like this: Pick a line/arrow tool, click to place staring point or said line/arrow, the line orient towards the mouse and keep following the mouse unitl clicked again to lock the direction and place the line/arrow on the map. Lines/Arrows could have a fixed length or be user definable with a reasonable maximum length to make  it harder to draw certain body parts all over the map.

 

5.) I’am hoping we get topographical commander map at some point. It’s sometimes really hard to see elevation differences on the map. Would also like if the commander map would clearly define forests from fields.

 

6.) I feel like we need a new zoom level in between fully zoomed out and the next zoom level in. Full map is too wide and one zoom level in I feels too zoomed in.

 

Mechanics:

7.) The new ammo, revive and rallypoint systems are truly amazing gameplay mechanics to give players a chance to be alive more than before, but not begin able to mount attacks without proper supplies, it begin easier to get people back up also really helps with squad cohesion. I think the next step might be to make spawns a resource like ammo and building mats with a cap of 40(?) per FOB. The only problem might be that if spawns are ferried by a logitruck a behind the lines supply disruption might become too powerful, a possible way around this might be giving fobs passive spawn resource regeneration, this would take some weight off logi squads so they don’t have to do that many runs to cap off the spawns on defensive FOBs. Maybe something like +2 spawns a minute if no-one has spawned in 5 minutes, so defensive FOB's would get fully loaded with spawns in 25 minutes with no logi effort. If implemented someone need to come up with a formula of how much ammo/building is one spawn. Maybe 10 spawns = 1000 supplies? Maybe logitucks always carry 10 spawns + room for 3000 supplies.

 

8.) The rallypoint system is really good, but could still maybe be improved upon. Rallypoints could have a limited amount of spawns to force players to pull back from an attack if they are in danger of running out of spawns on their rally. This could cause a new dynamic into the game where every attack doesn’t end in a wipe, but rather sometimes in a disengagement or a rout. I Think a full squad worth of spawns for one rally could be a good starting point for experimenting.

 

9.) The amount of rallies could also be limited and cost ammo to recharge, I feel like 3 rally points would be enough before SL needs to get a refill from an ammo source. 

 

10.) Played a couple of rounds of Post Scriptum and I really liked the way bushes and water slowed your movement down, creating natural chokepoints on the map. This is quite similar to my earlier suggestion thread about having different movement speeds for infantry depending on the terrain, but just adding this feature and making walking faster when on roads, could be a nice middle ground.

 

11.)Taking on a really steep incline should also slow down movement speed to create natural barriers.

 

12.) I feel like this has been discussed before, but I think you should be able to pack up buildable weapons, if shovelled down they should return building materials to the FOB. This would allow squads to react to enemy flanks and keep enemy armour guessing where the TOW is located. Ofcource there is the problem that in theory this would allow players to dig up HMG’s to build up TOW, but I believe the time it takes to dig up a couple of emplacements and the fact that you are trading them for a TOW is enough of a penalty.

 

UI and quality of life:

13.) I’am having a lot of trouble adjusting my mouse sensitivity. When I get everything adjusted the way I like in game my mouse is moving extremely slow in menus and on the command map. Would it be possible to have one more sensitivity slider for command map and ui?

 

14.) Don’t know if the UI scales with resolution (playing in 1920x1080), but I feel the left side of command map and spawn menu is starved for space on the vertical axis, with a full squad open to see their kits, you don’t have any room to view see any of the other squads with out scrolling. So the suggestion is to have the UI use more of the horizontal space for example, have squad members in two columns in the same space one squad member uses now with SL taking up both columns. This way you would get a nice symmetric layout and save some vertical space. In a perfect world this would auto arrange by fire teams, with alpha on top. I know some people are gonna dislike this, but I don’t really need to what gun someone is wielding, for me only name and kit would be enough. This could maybe be an option in the settings, to give players (me) choice to see or hide the weapon in exchange of seeing more info about your team.

 

15.) As a squad leader I would love to be able to box select squad members on the map and assign them to a fire team. Since a lot of the time squad cohesion breaks down at some point and you kinda have to make fire teams up as you go. 

 

Vehicles:

16.) I really like playing a squad that has an attached apc, ifv or mrap. Only problem is that all vehicles with open turrets, getting into the gunner seat is a death sentence, since the enemy know exactly where to aim as soon as you start firing. Would really like it if the gunner had a chance to take cover inside the vehicle, but still maintain some visibility, so you could suppress the enemy with the MG, and when they start returning fire you could take cover and wait for them to shift their fire off you again. This could make the MRAP and FV432 a little more viable choices as for infantry support vehicles rather than just battle taxis.

 

17.) Vehicle gunner views seem quite zoomed in even when zoomed out as much as possible. Don’t know if this is realistic or a design choice to force players to run vehicle with a crew of three, but I would love to have a bit more zoomed out view in the gunner seat. I’am also a big fan of the suggestion of binding unzoomed turret rotation to WASD and keeping zoomed in controlled by the mouse. With the exception of commanders view, which could be controlled using the mouse even when zoomed out.

18.) I bet this is already in the works, but vehicles really need a reverse camera (for those that have one in reality) or a view looking back from the driver window or rearview mirror. 

 

19.) I bet this one is also coming , but I wish jumping off a moving vehicle would cause damage, don’t mind friendly vehicles running over you not doing damage, but I feel like vehicles should stop to unload passengers.

 

20.) When playing with vehicles every now and then due to bad driving, going off road or just bad luck vehicles get stuck on the map. This creates some amazing experiences where you need to to defend the precious vehicle from an incoming enemy while you try and get an other squad with a vehicle to come and try to unf*ck your ride. The process of actually ramming the two vehicles together until both are free or stuck is quite immersion breaking. In Post Scriptum you have the ability to reset vehicle, but I think, just pressing a button to reset a vehicle is way too easy. I suggest that you should be able to reset a vehicle, but only if you have an other vehicle in close proximity. Idea begin that the other vehicle can tow the stuck vehicle out of the ditch. This would promote teamwork and hopefully less vehicles and tickets will be lost due to stuck vehicles and no more need to ram stuck vehicles. The best interface I came up for this would be to have a person “pick up” the vehicle and place it down like a buildable within a radius originating from the original position of the vehicle or the position of the vehicle not begin picked up to make sure you can actually get it back on the road. With this interface there might be a need to figure out way to stop people from carrying tanks up a ladder to rooftops. Limiting the radius to 5 meters could be a good place to start. One way of adding and extra layer of work to get your vehicle back on the road could be either using shovels to pick it up, or needing shovelling to make it enterable again after the relocation

 

I want to give big thanks to everybody working on the game, some of you maybe even since 2004. PR and Squad are one of a kind games, you have truly come up and mastered a new genre of gameplay mechanics! Thank you for the countless hours of PR and the countless hours of squad yet to come.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Laki
Last minute refining / note to self: stop writing forum posts at 4am Monday morning.

[embecmom]

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

FREINDY WALL OF TEXT INCOMING! GET INTO COVER! 

I

3.) I’am not a big fan of the UI for marking enemies on the map. Would rather have a radial menu on the map (It used to be a radial menu?). Also would love to be able to mark anything from the SL radial menu. Maybe have the middle “point of interest” button could be a kind of sub menu that you can cycle with the mouse wheel with all possible markers available. Also having the buttons in “mark enemy” submenu cycle with mouse wheel. The mark enemies menu arrangement feels kind of wonky for me at the moment. Most of the time I need to mark enemies quickly, but in the menu the 12 to 3  o'clock position that I hover my mouse over when entering the menu is for marking a FOB, which is the marker I use the least. I would suggest a new button placement, with mouse wheel functionally to scroll tough every marker of that type, in a clockwise order starting from 12 as follows: Infantry, armor, FOB, vehicle. And the middle of the mark enemy submenu we could have (with mouse wheel scrolling) all of the request markers.

remember you can mark enemies by not even needing to go into the map when you are an SL ..they just need to work a bit on the radial menu as it doesnt have enough different icons.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

4.) I would love to be able to place lines and arrows on the map. I don’t want to be able to draw on the map, because public servers are a thing, but to be able place attack arrow and defend lines to help me better coordinate my squad and team. These would only be accessible trough command map. The interface could work like this: Pick a line/arrow tool, click to place staring point or said line/arrow, the line orient towards the mouse and keep following the mouse unitl clicked again to lock the direction and place the line/arrow on the map. Lines/Arrows could have a fixed length or be user definable with a reasonable maximum length to make  it harder to draw certain body parts all over the map.

I tend to use the icon for the squad (the no.) asyou can place down multiple..

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

5.) I’am hoping we get topographical commander map at some point. It’s sometimes really hard to see elevation differences on the map. Would also like if the commander map would clearly define forests from fields.

would be nice to see some elevation on the map .

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

Mechanics:

7.) The new ammo, revive and rallypoint systems are truly amazing gameplay mechanics to give players a chance to be alive more than before, but not begin able to mount attacks without proper supplies, it begin easier to get people back up also really helps with squad cohesion. I think the next step might be to make spawns a resource like ammo and building mats with a cap of 40(?) per FOB. The only problem might be that if spawns are ferried by a logitruck a behind the lines supply disruption might become too powerful, a possible way around this might be giving fobs passive spawn resource regeneration, this would take some weight off logi squads so they don’t have to do that many runs to cap off the spawns on defensive FOBs. Maybe something like +2 spawns a minute if no-one has spawned in 5 minutes, so defensive FOB's would get fully loaded with spawns in 25 minutes with no logi effort. If implemented someone need to come up with a formula of how much ammo/building is one spawn. Maybe 10 spawns = 1000 supplies? Maybe logitucks always carry 10 spawns + room for 3000 supplies.

no disagree.. logistics is exactly that... the only reason an enemy becomes to powerful by disrupting the lines is because to many people think logis can move back and forwards between points without armoured support.  There are numerous and ongoing threads.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

8.) The rallypoint system is really good, but could still maybe be improved upon. Rallypoints could have a limited amount of spawns to force players to pull back from an attack if they are in danger of running out of spawns on their rally. This could cause a new dynamic into the game where every attack doesn’t end in a wipe, but rather sometimes in a disengagement or a rout. I Think a full squad worth of spawns for one rally could be a good starting point for experimenting.

there is another thread on this.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

9.) The amount of rallies could also be limited and cost ammo to recharge, I feel like 3 rally points would be enough before SL needs to get a refill from an ammo source. 

and same thread on this.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

10.) Played a couple of rounds of Post Scriptum and I really liked the way bushes and water slowed your movement down, creating natural chokepoints on the map. This is quite similar to my earlier suggestion thread about having different movement speeds for infantry depending on the terrain, but just adding this feature and making walking faster when on roads, could be a nice middle ground.

saw this mentioned on another thread but didnt see any reply from devs ,  it was related to having the vehicles react to the road surface and someone thought that troops should too.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

 

 

12.) I feel like this has been discussed before, but I think you should be able to pack up buildable weapons, if shovelled down they should return building materials to the FOB. This would allow squads to react to enemy flanks and keep enemy armour guessing where the TOW is located. Ofcource there is the problem that in theory this would allow players to dig up HMG’s to build up TOW, but I believe the time it takes to dig up a couple of emplacements and the fact that you are trading them for a TOW is enough of a penalty

agreed, discussed in another thread.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

 

15.) As a squad leader I would love to be able to box select squad members on the map and assign them to a fire team. Since a lot of the time squad cohesion breaks down at some point and you kinda have to make fire teams up as you go. 

Set them up during the planning stage ... but agree its a little cumbersome atm...

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

Vehicles:

16.) I really like playing a squad that has an attached apc, ifv or mrap. Only problem is that all vehicles with open turrets, getting into the gunner seat is a death sentence, since the enemy know exactly where to aim as soon as you start firing. Would really like it if the gunner had a chance to take cover inside the vehicle, but still maintain some visibility, so you could suppress the enemy with the MG, and when they start returning fire you could take cover and wait for them to shift their fire off you again. This could make the MRAP and FV432 a little more viable choices as for infantry support vehicles rather than just battle taxis.

you can duck down and turn your head using free look... 

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

 

19.) I bet this one is also coming , but I wish jumping off a moving vehicle would cause damage, don’t mind friendly vehicles running over you not doing damage, but I feel like vehicles should stop to unload passengers.

mmm not sure about this... the damage model is painful at times (scuse the pun) when jumping off items ... 

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

20.) When playing with vehicles every now and then due to bad driving, going off road or just bad luck vehicles get stuck on the map. This creates some amazing experiences where you need to to defend the precious vehicle from an incoming enemy while you try and get an other squad with a vehicle to come and try to unf*ck your ride. The process of actually ramming the two vehicles together until both are free or stuck is quite immersion breaking. In Post Scriptum you have the ability to reset vehicle, but I think, just pressing a button to reset a vehicle is way too easy. I suggest that you should be able to reset a vehicle, but only if you have an other vehicle in close proximity. Idea begin that the other vehicle can tow the stuck vehicle out of the ditch. This would promote teamwork and hopefully less vehicles and tickets will be lost due to stuck vehicles and no more need to ram stuck vehicles. The best interface I came up for this would be to have a person “pick up” the vehicle and place it down like a buildable within a radius originating from the original position of the vehicle or the position of the vehicle not begin picked up to make sure you can actually get it back on the road. With this interface there might be a need to figure out way to stop people from carrying tanks up a ladder to rooftops. Limiting the radius to 5 meters could be a good place to start. One way of adding and extra layer of work to get your vehicle back on the road could be either using shovels to pick it up, or needing shovelling to make it enterable again after the relocation

already discussed many times in other threads.

On 26/11/2018 at 1:36 AM, Laki said:

 

I want to give big thanks to everybody working on the game, some of you maybe even since 2004. PR and Squad are one of a kind games, you have truly come up and mastered a new genre of gameplay mechanics! Thank you for the countless hours of PR and the countless hours of squad yet to come.