Sticking to the same US/USSR HQC playstyle will not work with the FIA in 1.7
Solo play will result in you giving your gear and vehicles to the FIA for free
Solo building a base? You got caught by 1 FIA, who now has your construction truck, radio, gear and will use all these things against you
Solo operating a heli or armored vehicle? 1 FIA will watch and follow you for an hour, waiting for the perfect time to kill you and take your vehicle
Arsenals at every base enables constant sabotage
Every Arsenal is a place for the FIA to upgrade their gear from a simple pistol, to everything they need
There should only be a few arsenals at heavily defended bases, with lots of player traffic
Once the arsenal is not needed, it should be disassembled
Storage Depots are destructible
Hoarding depots in one spot is a saboteurs dream, they should be built under camo nets, and spread throughout the base
Depots can no longer be used for indestructible walls
Rushing to build bases or capture points will result in you getting ambushed
Players can't predict safe paths to drive or walk, the FIA could be ANYWHERE
FIA can reposition most of the default FIA AI, and landmines around the map
FIA can recruit more FIA to position
FIA can build defences
Bases need to be isolated so they're harder to infiltrate, and easier to defend
Bases built besides towns, forests etc allows the FIA to walk right in, even with AI defenders
A base built in a clear, open field, with sandbag walls makes it harder to infiltrate, and also protects the AI defenders
Just need to avoid positions that have high-ground looking into the base
Abandoning vehicles at every base you attack gives the FIA free transport
Many people spawn a vehicle, drive to an objective, and once they capture, will build a new vehicle station and spawn another vehicle, while their original one is a walk away
These scattered vehicles give the FIA more options for transport, to use them as roadblocks or ambushes
The FIA punishes those who lack situational awareness, who don't work within a group, and those who rush to complete their objectives.
I'm keen to see how this new danger will change how people play, how will you as a soldier, Squad Leader or Commander change your playstyle in this new environment?
Because those that don't know what they're doing will be wandering around lost, no ammo, and no idea, and will probably quit and never play FIA again. The FIA is a faction perfect for the hardcore, most bang for buck type of players.
Now this meme is about to get whole new meaning. Can’t wait for playable FIA, I despise both factions and will bully everyone equally. Nothing beats having a factions that is just there to fight out of spite
Because I’m extremely dissatisfied with Arma and being allowed to play FIA means I can finally be extremely mischievous and play the game to its full extent. Reforger doesn’t make sense in its current state? But adding the FIA will finally add something interesting.
Agree 100%. During Experimental I definitely saw an overall change in gameplay vs typical 1.6 HQC. Its much slower now. You also see many more bases being built up with defenses, especially MOB's, since they are now frequently attacked.
Another thing I noticed, I think they increased the respawn for FIA bots at inland supply points. So if folks build bases bases right on these points, they are going to be dealing with the bots constantly respawning like every 45 min or so.
Average game length in HQC is actually less than OG Conflict tho. Most OG Conflict games went a good 3-4 hours minimum while HQC games are lasting just 2 hours because US never runs supplies or builds bases.
As someone who enjoys playing US and enjoys running supplies, it's not that nobody runs supplies or builds bases. The bigger problem is that running supplies for US is kinda like trying to bail water out of a sinking boat, except you only have one bucket and there's 30 holes in the boat. It's hard to complete a run in the first place because nobody wants to escort a supply truck around, and it only takes one halfway-competent guy with an RPG to completely shut down a supply route.
And then, even if you do complete a supply run... I've watched a full truckload of supplies be entirely consumed by the time I get back to the supply harbor to load up for another run. MSAR helped with loadout barbies, but they didn't address the problem that anyone and everyone can spawn a vehicle whenever they want, so any person respawning at a base immediately eats almost 200 supplies between their loadout and the jeep they inevitably spawn because they're too lazy to catch a ride with someone else or walk back to the front lines.
This sounds like the nail in the coffin for HQC. It was already hard enough to keep stuff supplied due to low interest in supply driver gameplay and the rigid supply system. Now you get an extra faction that is just there to fuck up your supplies even more. Arey they even playing their own Game Mode regularly?
Sounds like you highly overestimate the impact of the faction. Ambushes, enemi3s sneaking around your base etc was already there without them. Using enemy armory to rearm also isnt something new.
Having played it in 1.7, I fear it really encourages some of the worst parts of Reforger. We already have some odd gameplay loops between supply runners and rats who have slipped past the front lines with an RPG.
Like it's objectively one of the most "effective" ways to play Reforger in 2026. We have these super diffuse front lines with limited massive engagements cause it's just so much more effective to be solo with an RPG and go hunt supply runners.
So each team needs folks running logistics, so the team focused players will be largely doing that. But the other team will have like 10 folks behind enemy lines blowing them up and harassing supply trucks.
We've ended up in a weird gameplay loop where it is actually quite rare to see combined arms pushes with helis, armored vehicles, and infantry fighting alongside each other. The most common thing is being a rat and popping out of a bush with an RPG and setting a truck on fire.
I don't have many solutions for this problem, but it really feels like Reforger is stuck in a weird spot. The FIA is gonna make this even worse cause FIA is basically designed to do even more back line harassment. I don't think supply runners will stick around for this very long - and that's been my experience in 1.7
Supply runners get annoyed and leave, and both US and RU stall out cause neither can get enough cohesion together to break out. And FIA just farms them for kills, as the best players end up there over time.
All the potential solutions either add severe limitations to the game in a way that takes away from the pseudo-sandbox nature of Reforger, or require significantly better handling of large-scale groups of AI. The easy but video-game-y solution is to say "the back lines are too well-secured to infiltrate" and have a dynamic "leaving the battlefield" warning, but... y'know, that's extremely video-game-y. The "proper" solution is significant friendly AI patrols, including backline logistics and vehicle patrols... but you already know how much the game struggles with AI limits.
8 is not enough. We will see a lot of people complaining they never get to play FIA and I already know it’ll be the same 8 people on loop in each match unless they have a way too cycle people.
In terms of player ratio, FIA faction will be a shitshow for public official play.
The chance of getting a game not dominated by FIA griefers will plummet.
I’m not at all hopeful that this will force more team play. Simply down to the fact that the advantage will lie with a coherent unit using asymmetric tactics.
You will never get the numbers required to clear and control lines of advance because in reality you would need >10x to lead an advance or protect vulnerable units (eg construction or logistics)
It will undoubtedly transform HQC but I really doubt it’s going to be positive for general gameplay. It will simply become a griefers wet dream, progress will slow to a crawl and casual players will just give up.
Backend roles are already challenging enough. Survive an FIA ambush only to have your construction truck flip on a small grass bank at 15kph.
I dont know what servers you play on but I use a small 4 man team to wreck buckling bases every game. The only difference now is I can do it to both sides.
I am a ambush, IED and VBIED player and am stoked to make people crash out.
War isnt fair and to hear people whine about how much harder this will be makes me laugh.
TLDR: it’s already frustrating under current normal* conditions to achieve most back end tasks, which most players don’t want to do today.
I just think those (official) servers will become too incoherent with FIA in the mix simply because it’s already takes fairly Herculean effort to build out to the PVP MLR.
The implied aspect of HQC is that your rear is secured. This does away with that with no explicit systems to support it, like improved AI management (eg patrolling). The defensive burden grows with your advance remember.
It’s not even a criticism of your preferred play style. Just that it has the potential to disrupt not just some progress, but when combined with all the other insane mechanics, will halt all progress. It’s likely that your leet ambush is the last straw, not the sole reason for a rage quit. But hey realism amarite!
You do know they're bumping the player count to 64 now though right? If teams are roughly balanced (28p) it should follow the 3:1 standard for offense to defense, if they stick with 8 for FIA one well coordinated team should be able to wipe them out. I do hope they got rid of random spawning though, they should be limited by radio range like all the other teams, but we'll have to see. EXP never had full servers even on the new 96 "stress tests", which is probably why they're just saying eff it push it to stable.
FIA being playable is a fun "idea" but it just seems to stack the deck further against the back line roles as you say.
It's already rare for folks to run supplies and that will drop further as the FIA will just add more friction.
We already have issues in Reforger where we so rarely see combined arms pushes from both teams in these escalating fights - it's usually just a crap shoot of folks running solo doing their own thing and often wasting supplies.
I... I dunno about this one boss.
And performance on PC is still rough. Tried it last night with an on screen performance monitor and the stutters are bad. System is 12700k and 5070 to.
Spawn in? Stutter like hell as the base loads (why not load it all and then actually spawn me in?). ADS? Stutter. Whip mouse around and look at that valley off to the east? Stutter. Get in vehicle? Stutter. Slam on brakes? Stutter. Get shot at? Stutter.
Agree with all that. I've noticed on experimental me solo and with my squadmates have started playing a guerrilla warfare style even when as US or USSR. Moving through forests and avoiding roads, using more explosives and using hit and run tactics as you can't just steamroll the early bases.
It will definitely catch a lot of people out same way HQC changing did
This shit will be the end of this game lol no one asked for fia in conflict at all, instead of actually adding something new or interesting the devs continue to fumble this games player base.
I have seen many people in the past wanting to control or play as FIA.
And yes they should add more stuff, they have destroyed BMP and other stuff already on the map. Just make those a higher quality and test how tracked vehicles behave before Arma 4 comes around. But we will probably not see this.
I play mostly Vanilla HQC and I can assure you this will not be the end of the Game.
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u/bobbyhillfigure22 8d ago
I am so ready to make players rage quit with my ambushes and (improvises) improvised explosive devices