To visualize exactly how much more than general forum chat it takes to design a proper feedback like this, Ill keep up the questions.
- Why would players teamplay more, just because they get suppressed by weapons more? It sounds like the goal (for you) is that players hug each other (meaning, they all stand 6 in line like the outlaws in a western movie, firing against the alone sheriff) but on the receiving end, it makes no difference if you are in a squad or not.
If I'm alone, and suppressed by anything that may be fired at me, I will quickly realize that I am useless by myself, especially against a larger group of enemies, because I cannot possibly, by myself, match the amount of fire power that they are putting on to my position. Think of it as a dodge ball game, if I'm the last player on my dodge ball team, I cannot possibly just charge forward and start throwing dodge balls in a blind hope of winning the game, if I charge forward, the combined strength of the other team throwing dodge balls at me, will overwhelm me and eventually I will get hit and lose. However, if in that same dodge ball game the whistle has just sounded to start, and I have six men with me against six men of theirs, I now have a higher percentage of survivability in the dodge ball game because there are more targets, and we can match the amount of dodge balls coming at us, with our own dodge balls of equal number. People are not stupid, they will realize this.
I think you actually want less suppression for players who are in a squad, or hugging nearby players. (which again would be possible for a game to design.) That would maybe make them stick together more (I doubt it) but just because the enemy is getting supressed by my teammates MG fire, why would I (as rifle man) care about that?
You are misunderstanding the idea of the "suppression." This has nothing to do with some advanced idea like, people who are in squads should be suppressed less than those that are not. What this has to do with is the numbers of people and the type of the weapon being able to compete with each other for superiority. So say my five man rifleman squad comes up on a three man squad that consists of a Mg42 gunner and two Kar98 rifleman, well they have an advantage in the MG42 which as a high rate of fire and can be used to cover an area, plus two K98 rifles to all help suppress us, and keep our squad at a disadvantage by the means of the visual hindrance. To respond to that threat, my five man rifleman squad is complete with five men all carrying Garands. Our Garands are semi-automatic and against their two rifleman prove superior, but against the MG42 we may have a hard time matching the level of suppression coming at us. Say that all the men in the group were firing for a predetermined amount of time, lets say One Minute.
The MG42 in-game fires at nine hundred rounds a minute, and has a two hundred and fifty round ammunition belt. At that rate of fire the ammunition runs out (lets say that there is no overheating) in 16.6 seconds, (900/60 = 15. 250/15 = 16.6) and then a reload takes 5.2 seconds. So in that time period, if the Mg42 started firing at the very first second to the last, the Mg42 would have put down a total of 675 rounds straight at us.
Lets say the K98 Rifleman are firing unzoomed, the K98 gets off a shot every 1.15 seconds in game, and has a five round magazine, reloading takes 4.625 seconds. So the K98 firing away, gets off a total of about 29 rounds in that sixty second time span. The German three man squad has now put down a total of 733 rounds of ammunition in our direction. If each and everyone of those is suppressing us, and lets say that the suppression time was very low (like I think it should be btw), lets say for this example its as quick as one tenth of one second, then we spent a total of 1.2 minutes suppressed.
The Five man Garand squad is firing as quick as they can, the Garand fires at a rate of 450 rounds per minute in-game, with a reload time of 4 seconds. This means that each of the garand rifleman is getting of 94 rounds during that time. So altogether the American squad put down 470 rounds in the one minute time period, suppressing the Germans for a total of forty-seven seconds.
These examples were not to prove who won the firefight, since that is determined by random factors such as who gets hit, where their positions were, and other factors, but this is to demonstrate how the idea of fire superiority works with the suppression effect. The Germans in this case put down a far greater volume of fire with three men than the Americans did with five, despite the Americans best efforts to suppress the Germans. This means that the Germans in this particular case would've had an upper hand in the firefight despite being out numbered because they could keep the Americans blind
longer than they could keep
them blind. The MG42 alone could compete with the entire American squad and the K98 riflemen would've been free to maneuver around and possibly place enfilade fire on the flanks of the Americans drastically increasing their chances of being killed.
The Suppression effect is all about who has more firepower coming down. In-fact the need for it was demonstrated well on Lebisey as I was just playing with a few friends from WaW. There was only five of us in the server, but with a Bren gun (which is capable of suppression) I was able to sit prone on a stair case for much longer than I should have been allowed to and shoot these poor chaps because they couldn't see as I shot at them, where as their bullets were snapping in-front of me without any effects. This gave me the upper hand because I could see them and they couldn't see me. Now if it had been that their rifles and Mp40s could have suppressed me, they were actually putting down a greater amount of fire than I was with my bren, firing in short bursts. Between the three of them in the enemy squad, there was one sub machine gunner, and two rifleman who could have easily blinded me and prevented me from getting accurate shots off if they worked together. But as it is now, their only hope was to try and go far around me on either side, or zig-zag up the field until they were close enough to hit me, or pray that I didn't notice them long enough for them to get a shot off. If I could've been suppressed, alone I would've been useless.
General game play - the second to second decisions the average players is doing - is mostly, if not all, depending on what he can do himself. Not what his teammates might or might not do.
As MG42 gunman, if my enemies are getting surpressed, I don't gain anything by that, because they won't be supressed long enough for me to storm in with my pistol and finish them off, and Im less likely to get some kills if they just squat behind a wall.
As rifle-man, I cant rely on the constant fire by my teammate, he can stop firing at any second, and if Im advancing over an empty field in for ex; vossenack or St.Lo, Ill be totally exposed and just lol-fragged. So I will still use the map and the designated (designed) cover to get to my goal.
Lets use your MG42 Gunner as an example though. Your saying that they are not suppressed long enough for you to charge in and use your pistol to finish them off, and that is true, they shouldn't be, because if you stop firing your MG42 you are no longer suppressing them. If however your team a mix of rifleman and sub machine gunners could suppress as well, then you could in theory while under the cover of their suppressing fire advance forward and finish him off. The idea is that people work together to keep the rate of fire constant, even if your team mates do stop firing, say to reload or because they get distracted by some other means, any amount of time they can use covering your advance is valuable time to cover distance on foot, or to engage targets that need to be taken out, especially machine guns and other static defenders.
Suppression also allows players to be able to advance across those areas of open ground that may otherwise be impassable due to well entrenched defenders. Because now, if players coordinate well enough within their squads, they will be able to successfully keep the enemy blind, or his head down, long enough for somebody, even if its not their squad, to advance and take out the threat, or for the threat to move on somewhere else.
Sure: I can imagine in my head how you want this to play out; MG42 guy shoots at a flag, and all the enemies there are scared and suppressed, so the other guys in the MG42 squad can kind of "circle around them" and take the flag... That sounds cool in a singleplayer game like CoD or BiA, but you forget that those players that are getting suppressed, are humans, and will refuse to let the game take away their controls or pretend to be scared. The idea is based on an ideal of player behaviour, not actual player behaviour. (since we lack proper means to make real suppression)
Nobody is pretending to be scared. Again, I said not to take my words literally, Suppression of this type will never scare anybody, and certainly nobody is "role-playing" here. The simple fact is though, that the visual hindrance that the effect creates, can be used as a valuable tool to get across open ground, assault fortified positions, to keep squads in place, and even to decrease the accuracy of fire that is destroying teammates else where. It is useful, it has been proven to work in other games, and it needs to be included in FH2.