Suppressive Fire as of .95, does it work?

[Ziriix]

Well the use of suppressive fire is almost impossible to explain. This is something you have decide at a split second if its needed or not. If you have a cover next to you and you know were the enemy are shooting from sure you can take cover and start suppressing him while your friend is flanking the enemy from another street. Suppressing someone without cover is suicide if he engaged you first. The only time you can do this is in CQB (50 meters and closer). For example the enemy just came down some kind of stairs and you see each other at the same time. If you turn around and run for cover you are dead if your not extremely lucky. Here you should use rapid suppressive fire just bursting all over the place ofc at the enemy and hope that he get scared and runs away or your friends kill him.

Something i have learned in the irl military is that if you get engaged first you take cover instantly! Communicate with your squad if anybody know were its coming from. At a special command from my squadleader we switch to automatic fire and shoot about half a mag at the enemy position at the same time. After that we can start moving since the enemy is now suppressed.

Short version:
If the enemy engage you first: Take cover or run to cover.
If you engage the enemy first: Cover is not needed since they should die before they can do you any harm.
If you are falling back from a firefight: Use smoke and grenades to confuse the enemy and maby shoot 5 rounds around them and run in sick sack. If you have a whole squad shooting at you don't even bother stopping to shoot again because you will die, Its better to just run like a mad man.

COVER WILL KEEP YOU ALIVE!

[cyberzomby]

Just watch some experienced players in more "gamey" clans like OD-S for example. Theres a reason those guys usually have absurd KDR's. Its because they don't stay down in surprising fire. They know where to aim despite the blurred screen. Of course you need cover to survive. Thats what I said as well. If you don't take cover, you have a high chance of getting hit.

But theres a lot of people who still peek up or even stand up and return fire when receiving fire. And they can fire back accurate as well. In BF3 your accuracy will be reduced. So than you won't be able to take out the surpresor.

I love the effect in PR as well btw. It really works on most players People do run for cover and than start returning fire. But I was just agree'ing with someone else in this thread that the OP romanticised the covering fire tool in PR.

[PFunk]

I think what Rudd said earlier about it being more important in a 128 server in the future is probably true. There are just not enough people in any given fire fight usually to make it so that gamey tactics fail. When you have only a handful of people to fight gameyness can win the day easily. However a gamey strategy is just a way of playing the odds in your favour. With more hostile guns facing you a lone soldier doing something heroic probably won't succeed nearly as well. With more people on the field, and the potential for even more disproportionate engagements (like 6 versus 16) suppressing fire can become a bigger tool since you'll have more rifles to suppress someone who has few and can ensure that your suppression is also going to probably kill more often give the higher volume of fire.

Now the thing to be determined is whether an organized unit of 2 or 3 squads can outplay, given equivalent skill regardless of tactics employed, an equal sized unit utilizing a more run n gun style. Things can change dramatically when you increase or decrease the number of people involved. Bigger units are harder to flank, have more flexibility in assaulting in more situations while suppressing whereas the average PR squad of 6 usually can barely get more than half its guns firing effectively at an enemy.

Really if you think about it our squads of 6 are held to a tactical imperative almost analogous to a special forces fireteam. They lack the brute force of a 13 person squad so they employ different tactics and those are more appropriate for units of that size. Suppressing a unit in a small squad is liable to just give away your position when you should probably instead be trying to close the distance and get them by surprise. The most successful experiences of suppressing a target in preparation for assaulting it is generally, for me, when a squad faces a lone soldier or pair of soldiers. In larger squad sized engagements most pubbies can't focus on firing at stuff other than literally what they see and usually I see one or two guys in a squad go down before all 6 guys have started shooting.

Another thing to note is that I believe, and I may be wrong, that real life soldiers don't suppress a target the way most people in PR tend to. Usually you see people shooting and you get the feeling its like "well I'm suppressing so I don't have to bother trying to be accurate, I'll just put as much lead over there as possible". Usually that means your bullets trigger the suppression effect but most people know its not gonna be as likely to hit you. In real life I think most suppressing fire is like a shot every second at the most and thats enough time to start aiming better than a lot of people do when you say "suppress that marker". As I understand it in real life suppressing fire is more like a high volume of aimed fire with much less reliability cause soldiers get less time to settle for their shots.

[ComradeHX]

Suppression does not work when you know that the one trying to shoot you can only hit the cover, and not you.

There should be smaller effective areas for suppression; it should only come up if the bullet hits the cover/ground directly in front of the person, not half a meter away.

[Wo0Do0]

Originally Posted by cyberzomby

Just watch some experienced players in more "gamey" clans like OD-S for example. Theres a reason those guys usually have absurd KDR's. Its because they don't stay down in surprising fire. They know where to aim despite the blurred screen. Of course you need cover to survive. Thats what I said as well. If you don't take cover, you have a high chance of getting hit.

But theres a lot of people who still peek up or even stand up and return fire when receiving fire. And they can fire back accurate as well. In BF3 your accuracy will be reduced. So than you won't be able to take out the surpresor.

I love the effect in PR as well btw. It really works on most players People do run for cover and than start returning fire. But I was just agree'ing with someone else in this thread that the OP romanticised the covering fire tool in PR.

In PR, "gamey" clans completely and utterly destroy "realism" clans, history has shown itself.

[Spec]

Luckily that's irrelevant as PR isn't as much about clan competition as it is about unique gameplay.

[cyberzomby]

Actually it was relevant. Realism clans would order there SM's to surpress that target! While gamey clans would just rush the surpressors and take them out. If they where a realism clan they'd hit the dirt and scream for there mothers.

Funk I agree with your post there. One of the things that hit me when I got off the 128 player server for the first time was the Spec. Ops gameplay we have. Its more like teams of commandos fighting each other rather than squads of infantry.

[PFunk]

Originally Posted by cyberzomby

Funk I agree with your post there. One of the things that hit me when I got off the 128 player server for the first time was the Spec. Ops gameplay we have. Its more like teams of commandos fighting each other rather than squads of infantry.

Thats why I believe that 128 PR is the future of this mod. Without it the gameyness will just get more acute. A 10 person squad has the survivability to lose 1 or 2 people in the opening volley of fire and still return a significant amount of bullets. Its basically just fractions.

A 10 person squad losing 2 men (usually the guys on point or at the front of the blob) has only lost 10% of their effective firepower. losing 2 out of 6 means losing 33%.

Compare it to losing 2 fingers versus losing a whole hand. Which of those two will put you at a worse disadvantage?

Larger squads are the only way to go, and this means it forces a higher lever of leadership and cooperation. Lone wolves would really suffer in this situation and I think smart team play overall would get a significant boost in appeal.

There will always be pure skill at the forefront of success in this game, but thats true in any situation.

Whats more is that a 10 man squad can by default become 2 fireteams at almost the exact same level of firepower as 2 regular squads in PR but with a unity and flexibility you won't see in two strange squads operating with SL mumble. Whatever a super skill player will tell you, splitting up and hitting someone from behind while you're still shooting from the front is always a good way to kill lots of mofos.

[Cossack]

What PFunk is saying - it's 100 % true.

And about those commando battles - it depends on situation and/or enemy.
If you want to win the battle, you must be aggressive to make pressure on enemy and overwhelm it.
And yeah, probably it looks like commando rushing.

[Agemman]

Originally Posted by PFunk

A 10 person squad losing 2 men (usually the guys on point or at the front of the blob) has only lost 10% of their effective firepower. losing 2 out of 6 means losing 33%.

Do you mean 20%? But yes, I agree on the whole. Leading a 10-man squad would be pretty awesome.