Today, I got to play on a server running Al Basrah in insurgency mode for a while now. After getting to play the mode extensively, I have to say that it is most definately awesome.
For those of you who don't know, Insurgency mode is a new game mode that will come with .6. During Insurgency games, the primary objective for the British is to find and eliminate all of the insurgent ammo caches on the map. There are several spots where the ammo caches can spawn, and at the beginning of the round the server randomly chooses ten of these spots, and spawns the objective ammo caches there. The Brits don't know where the ammo caches are, but insurgents, who are supposed to defend them, have them marked on their maps.
This makes for games that are quite different from what AAS/Conquest feels like. Instead of frontally assaulting insurgent positions, where they're well dug-in and ready for an extensive regular battle, you move through the city, searching sector after sector, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood and going house to house, checking for ammo dumps. Although there are two flags on the map that are cappable, capping them is not the priority. Insurgents can always spawn at the Mosque, and considering how vulnerable ammo dumps are to small arms fire, they're inclined to actually defend the individual caches, instead of getting into street battles with British infantry, supported my their IFVs. One guy can rush in and blow up an unguarded ammo dump, making defense that much more important.
I actually managed to get a good squad going on the Insurgency mode server today. If any of the guys who were in my squad are reading this, I'd like to thank you for the teamwork and cooperation. Either way, being the organized squad that we were, we systematically searched different parts of the city, looking for ammo dumps. At one point, we grabbed two Landrovers, and rode out into the Village, parked the cars, disembarked, and searched every house, making sure that there were no ammo dumps anywhere. Unfortunately, we didn't find any, so we got back in our cars, and moved on to a different part of the city. We didn't encounter any armed resistance at the Village, however, as we were searching it, we didn't know what we would find. There was no way to tell if we would find an ammo dump guarded by 20 angry insurgents with guns, or just a bunch of dust and cinderblocks. That is what makes the Insurgency mode as fun as it is. It resembles what Coallition troops face in Iraq: instead of full-on battles, they search for insurgents, trying to eliminate them and their bases of operation. You get skirmishes when they find something, and not regular all-out war all the time.
Throughout the round, xWOLFx (the dev) helped us as a civilian. As cheap as it might seem, it was actually somewhat cool - a civilian cooperated with the Brits instead of the insurgents. Of course, there were some troubles with other squads eliminating our informant, but other than that, he led my squad to a bunch of ammo caches. He would show us an ammo dump, and we would let him go the other way... well, except that one time when he led us into an ambush... you can't trust the damn civvies. The round basically went by with no heavy fighting. Yes, an insurgent or two would open up on us in certain parts of the city (namely, in the facility-mosque area), but other areas we searched were utterly devoid of life (which, of course, we didn't know until we searched them thoroughly). At one point, we encountered some heavier fighting - we soon figured out that we stumbled upon an ammo cache location, and insurgents were fiercly defending it. Once we had that area pinpointed, we brought the entire team on that area, and supported by a Warrior we managed to take out the ammo cache. That was another one of those cool/realistic things; a single patrol encountered insurgent positions, so reinforcements were called in to deal with them.
All of this makes me wonder what would be the best insurgent tactics for Insurgency mode. There are ten ammo dumps, and there certainly aren't enough people to post a squad at every one of the ammo dumps. It would seem like insurgents have to rely on their mobility, and form quick reaction forces that can engage british who are close to ammo dump locations. Fighting can erupt at any point in the map, and when it starts, it is guaranteed to escalate as both sides bring in more assets to deal with the enemy. Perhaps there is room in it for civilians - they can serve as scouts. Civilians can climb to all sorts of funny places using their grappling hooks, and once there, they can observe enemy movement, without the enemy being able to do much about it (if they can't climb up after the civilian to knife him, they can only kill him, which is undesirable). Indeed, that would make the civilian collaborators reflect actual civilian collaborators in real life, who can use cellphones/radios/pigeons to inconspiciously report on Coallition troop movements, while still looking like perfectly innocent civilians.
Anyway, this post is kinda huge, so here's a civilian standing on a highway sign:
