Suggest: New Grey Zone play dynamic

Mess Room
1

It seems there is quite a bit of chatter on the interwebs about grey zone camping tanks being a source of serious hearburn since the grey zone is completely out of bounds for infantry to infiltrate.

I have a suggestion that I would like to offer for consideration. The grey zone should be accessible to A LIMITED NUMBER of infantry. If the number goes above the cap, then everyone in the grey zone immediately triggers the timer and the ones who were “offsides” have to head back to the front lines.

If the infiltrating squad scores {X} number of combat points while in the grey zone, a dynamic “behind enemy lines” capture point becomes available to take inside the grey zone and the grey infantry cap increases so that other troopers can enter grey zone and join the assault.

If the infiltrators take the grey capture point, the grey zone becomes open for attackers to place a rally point.

If a rally point gets set up in the grey zone, the entire grey zone becomes open to attackers (as long as at least one grey rally point exists. If other side destroys all behind lines rallies, grey zone relocks and everyone in it gets timed and must retreat back to lines)

BOOM! You’ve got a double envelopment.

2

The crux of the idea is that currently, a grey zone camped tank can only be touched by a few methods (very well placed tanker shot, mortar, airstrike, aerial bombing)

If infantry can penetrate the grey zone in a way that allows them to gain an advantage by taking out a grey zone camped tank while themselves being behind enemy lines, then the grey zone gets an entirely new meaning. It would encourage defenders to push up for front line defense or they’d have to risk the downsides of an infiltration completely turning the tides on their camping strategy. If they want to keep a Tiger camping back to bombard, they might have to keep an infantry squad hanging back out of necessity to prevent the position from being overrun.

Seeing a grey zone camped tank would still be a serious threat to your main assault thrust, but being able to send (say) 2 squads into the grey to take it out and gain a sizable benefit would require new thinking.

If the defenders don’t camp in the grey, then the dynamic doesn’t become available for infiltration. You have to “stay where the action is.”

3

I still think this option is better where it tries to make you play some sort of lone fighter instead of you Sending a specialized squad to take over the grey zone.

A different way for the Gray zone to work instead of what we have right now - Suggestions - Enlisted

4

I wasn’t suggesting that you have to get a specialized squad for this. What I was intending to suggest is something like an “offsides” rule for the grey zone. If enemies are in it, you can enter under limiting rules that I explained. If they aren’t, then you get the normal grey zone.

For the sake of discussion, lets combine our ideas (I didn’t know you’d made your suggestion until you linked it) I think that your idea works inside mine as long as you don’t exceed the cap. Let’s pretend that cap is 6.

So if you’ve got a downed fighter pilot behind enemy lines, let’s tinker with the options:
1)he can work to get back to front lines as usual,
2)he can recon and spot grey zone targets
3)he can play hero and try to take grey position as Rambo
4)he can link up with infiltration squad and join grey assault.

The thing I personally really like about this is that defenders have to pay attention to EVERY parachute if they want to camp. They’re still able to do it, but they don’t get to camp a Tiger with zero risk at all anymore.

If you don’t have a “lone fighter” in the zone, then you can use normal squad tactics inside the zone as long as you don’t go over the cap. It’d be very bad if you infiltrated with max infantry then had a pilot have to bailout behind lines and you all get zapped for going over. But making it a hard cap is where I’d start and I’d set it to 6 soldiers.

What do you think?

1 Like
5

It could probably work in certain scenarios but definitely for the pilot but not for regular infantry some people are gonna find a way to abuse it and it’s gonna be even more terrible when it comes to end game so it’s better If we keep it to lone fighter mechanics.

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6

I’m trying to put together rules that couldn’t be abused; it would make the grey-zone work under quasi “offsides” rules. I don’t think a lone fighter is an effective enough force to take on a camped Tiger. That’s my primary vision.

I’ll run through it again with two changes:

  1. set the default grey maximum to 1 to always enable “lone infiltration” and “pilot downed behind enemy lines” types of play.

  2. eliminate my idea for a “dynamic CP” in the grey zone. I think that makes it too complicated to pull off with only 6 guys and no chance at reinforcements.

So let’s give the lone fighter in all cases.
If you have one soldier in the grey zone, there’s no penalty regardless of what the enemy is doing and where they’re setting up. By default, if a second soldier enters the grey zone, the timer triggers and everyone has to retreat.

Now, let’s start to layer in additional grey rules. It starts with defender artillery being set up in the grey zone “behind enemy lines.” That would be what triggers the new dynamic. For sake of simplifying (already slightly complex) let’s use a cumulative timer. If {x} seconds of artillery camping occurs, then grey zone becomes expanded for infiltration.

Now, the cap for grey zone infiltration goes up from 1 to 6. A squad or 2 small squads can infiltrate behind lines, or paratroopers can drop in, destroy the tank(if it’s still there) or set up tactics to target rear of front from behind lines. If enough points are scored from within the grey zone, rally points can be set in it. Attacker now takes grey zone for themselves and have the front lines double enveloped.

I know it’s slightly elaborate. It’s not meant to be a “normal” mode of play. It’s meant to add something that counterbalances a grey camped tank without telling defenders they can’t camp in the grey. They can but if the attacker overruns their rear guard, defenders take a SEVERE tactical penalty by being double enveloped.

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7

All your stuff is good but it’s too convoluted my suggestion is a much better outcome because it applies to the entire team so everyone on the team who’s active they can go in the Gray zone but their bots can’t because if you start bringing in people will find a way to abuse it and start taking over the grey zone in lone fighters you can’t do such cheesy strats like that.

And my suggestion doesn’t involve the devs doing too much difficult coding it just makes it so the bots don’t work and you can just go into grey zone by yourself so they don’t have to change all that much to the code.

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8

In order to make the grey zone off limits most times, available some of the time, not have it be controlled by a “hard switch” that would just make the behind lines area a free for all, and counterbalance camping artillery, the rules have to come out somewhat convoluted because there are going to be a lot of “what ifs?” to answer. But everyone understands how pinball jackpots work, how extra balls get unlocked, how multi-ball plays, etc, etc. The rules for a basic pinball game are far more convoluted than this. I think it’s still simple enough for people to grok.

So you’re saying that there would be no limit on the number of troops in the grey zone, just that only human controlled troops could enter?

What would the AI troops do? Would they just stand at the border while you go to the back of the map? What happens if your controlled soldier dies; do you jump into one of the AI troopers waiting at the border like you normally would?

…I dunno. I think that would be a bit more complicated to pull off than you think. Adjusting the AI to make it do ANYTHING useful at the fringe of the grey zone like set up a basic defensive position would be a non-trivial change. And since the AI controlled troops are designed to not be away from the human player, there’d have to be new follow rules that migut be more complicated than you’re considering.

I’m a software developer (22 years) This can be done with only a few orchestrated changes.

Delta #1: The game already tracks if a player is in the grey zone, because they get autofragged. Add an accumulator to keep track of how many soldiers are in the grey zone.

Delta #2: Suppress grey zone timers as long as accumulator max isn’t exceeded. If it’s exceeded, everyone’s grey timer immediately starts.

Delta #3: Allow rally points to be placed in the grey zone but consider the entire grey zone to be in “active battle” to prevent spawning.

Delta #4: Add cumulative timer to defender artillery in the grey zone.

Delta #5: If camping timer exceeds threshold, (#2) troop max capacity is raised to 6.

Delta #6: Track number of combat points accumulated by troops while in the grey zone

Delta #7: After combat point accumulator hits limit, grey zone “active battle” (#3)disappears and assault troop maximum(#2) is made infinite

The specific amount of camp time and the specific number of combat points that operate the locks would have to be play tested.

I’d start them at

  1. Timer= 3 minutes camp time - “reasonable amount of time for tank to pass through the gray zone after spawn if they aren’t trying to camp.” Or simplify and make it 4 minutes cumulative per CP

  2. Combat Points=“# of points gained for destroying a Tiger” …I don’t know exactly how many that is.

and work from there.

…easy peasy