Video Game / Squad

Squad is a standalone video game by Offworld Industries, that is set out to recreate a realistic tactical multiplayer military experience. It is being created by veteran modders of the Battlefield 2 modification Project Reality and is a spiritual successor to it.

Thus far, the game features the following factions:

BLUFOR

• United States Army
• United States Marine Corps
• British Army
• Canadian Army
• Australian Defence Force

REDFOR

• Russian Ground Forces
• Russian Airborne Forces
• People’s Liberation Army
• People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps
  • People's Liberation Army Amphibious Ground Forces

OPFOR

• Middle Eastern Alliance
• Insurgents
• Irregular Militia

The game also has two spin-offs: Post Scriptum, set during the Western Front World War II, and Beyond the Wire, set during World War I. Both started as mods for Squad until they became standalone games, made by separate teams but published by Offworld Industries.

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Squad provides examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Trying to avert as much as possible. One of the main reasons Squad as a project was made was to get away from the Battlefield 2 engine restraints into a more malleable and modular Unreal Engine 4 game.
• Action Bomb: It is possible to improvise these by strapping explosives to vehicles. The irregular factions are much better at doing so, as they have access to remote-controlled IEDs and small, fast vehicles (including a handheld drone and motorcycle) that can sneak into enemy lines and detonate before the enemy can react. This means that an irregular team can use an IED strapped to a car, drone, or (lacking other options) soldier to cripple an opposing fortification by blowing up their spawn point before overwhelming the position
• A.K.A.-47: Mostly Averted, as the game prefers to name guns by either their model names, or by the faction designations (the US' M240B, GB's L7A2, and CAF's C6 are all fundamentally the same gun with slight modifications). This does lead to a few instances where weapons are given technically correct, but unusual names, such as the M249 SAW being named the 'Minimi' (after the original FN Minimi, the weapon that was adopted as the M249), or the EOTech 552 sight being named the 'ET552'. Most vehicles have their proper designations, though there are some oddities, such as the Canadian LAV ISC (Infantry Section Carrier) being labelled as a normal LAV III^note An actual LAV III has a full turret with a Bushmaster chain gun and a coaxial machine gun, like the LAV 6.0. Calling a LAV ISC a LAV III is the equivalent of calling an AMPV an M2 Bradley.
  • Surprisingly, the HK417 appears with its name completely unaltered, despite bearing the HK trademark. As an interesting detail, however, the side of the rifle's receiver is marked with 'F417', likely as a nod to the 'F' designations given to Australian small arms. It should be noted that while the HK417 is in service in the Australian Army, it was never given this designation.
• All-or-Nothing Reloads: Averted. Individual rounds are tracked inside their magazines.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The game is deliberately vague as to the exact year it takes place. The various armies are kitted out with equipment and uniforms that would be correct for roughly the late 2000's to the mid or late 2010's, without definitively choosing a moment in time that every army can be pinned down to.
• Anonymous Ringer:
  • Played Straight with the Insurgent faction. It was originally named Taliban but to dodge future controversy/problems with using the name the middle eastern insurgent faction is now named Insurgents. However, this also gives the devs more options in how to outfit the faction as they are no longer stuck with a limited spectrum of arms and equipment that the Taliban would use.
  • Their European counterparts, the Irregular Militia, are likewise this to Chechen insurgents, Eastern Ukranian separatists and former yugoslav paramilitary groups^note although they do stand in for a number of paramilitary forces, such as Quebecois and Newfoundlander separatists (in the Canadian scenarios), neo-communist insurgents and Norwegian resistance fighters (when in maps depicting Norway).
  • The Middle Eastern Alliance's concept of a unified faction of middle eastern nations is based on the Axis of Resistance, a very loose military alliance between Iran, Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq and Yemen's Houthi movement, with most of its equipment being based off of the Iranian Army with touches of the Iraqi Army.
  • The People’s Liberation Army had the working name of "PanAsia" (presumably to not be Banned in China) but it was changed by late development to be straight-up the PLA.
• Anti-Frustration Features: When you respawn, your ammo count will be the same as it was when you died. You will always respawn with a minimum of two magazines and bandages however, so you will never be dropped into a battle completely unequipped.
• Ascended Meme: Early in the game's development, a bug caused the Unreal Engine lighting sphere to be visible during regular gameplay, which became something of a Companion Cube for the game's players. This has since been patched out, but two Easter Eggs remain in its memory. First, the Cool Code of Source that plays when you start up a helicopter features a 'PRAISE SPHERE' string at the bottom. Second, if you wander off the beaten path during the tutorial, you can discover a shrine to the lighting sphere. Approaching it will trigger a zombie survival minigame.
• A-Team Firing: You have to wait several seconds between bringing the weapon's sights up and firing in order to ensure an accurate shot, otherwise your rounds will spray everywhere.
  • Also justified in practice, as suppressive fire is not only part of the system, it's highly encouraged once your squad leader tells you to go loud on an enemy position.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: Most of the Russian made troop transport vehicles fit the description, as they're normally also meant to be able to act as IFVs. Most notable among them are the BTR-80 and the BTR-82A, the latter of which comes with a fully automatic 30mm autocannon, making it one of the most heavily-armed wheeled vehicles in the game. The Americans meanwhile use the less-heavily armed IAV Stryker, outfitted with an M2 heavy machinegun, but compensate by bring the M2A3 Bradley IFV, armed with the highly effective 20mm Bushmaster chaingun, and TOW missiles for anything tough enough the resist that, plus some excellent armour, making it able to take out pretty much any enemy it comes across if handled well. As for the British, while the normal Warrior is one of the weaker IFVs, the FV520 CTAS^note A semi-fictional variant based on the cancelled upgrade program for the Warrior has a 40mm autocannon with proper stabilization, making it one of the most powerful IFVs in the game.
• Bayonet Ya: The combat knives are named "bayonets", which is accurate since they are also used as fighting or utility knives and can be attached to be a bayonet, but if you use them in game you'll just use them as a normal knife. This trope then only applies to the SKS, it comes with one permanently attached that is simply flipped out into position instead of pulling a knife.
• BFG: Most of the Heavy Anti-Tank kit weapons count:
  • The Russian Ground Forces get the RPG-28, best described as a modern cannon in terms of its function, as it's more or less a man portable, single shot tank gun similar specs to that of a T-72's.
  • The British Army use the NLAW, which on top of its imposing size and distinctive silhouette features a Predicted-Line-Of-Sight system, where rockets can pre-emptively track a moving target.
  • The United States Marine Corps use the SMAW, a rocket launcher with a built-in spotting rifle that fires tracer rounds, allowing its user to range a target before making the shot.
  • The US Army and Australians pack the 84mm. Carl Gustav III recoilless Rifle for heavy duty Anti Tank action, the Canadians have the older Carl Gustav II, but with the distinction of being able to fire anti infantry HE rounds from them, which gives a Canadian Heavy Anti Tank specialist about the same firepower as a small tank.
  • The MEA and Insurgent Heavy Anti Tank kits have the Russian made RPG-29 Vampir, a beast of a cannon that fires 105mm. tandem rounds and has a firing arc that is rather similar to most Light Anti Tank weapons, making it remarkably effective at long ranges. This, along with the fact that it comes with 2 tandem AT rounds instead of the regular 1, makes it a favourite among the playerbase.
  • The PLA's heavy anti tank specialists use the gigantic 120mm. PF-98 "queen bee", which has a very straight projectile arc and a rangefinder, which makes it one of the, if not the most practical anti tank gun in the game.
• Black Screen of Death: Makes a triumphant return.
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted. All weapons, just like the original Project Reality mod been designed to have finite ammo supplies. This includes fixed MGs like .50 cals or tank ammo, which in other games are usually bottomless.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Pretty much every faction uses some older gear in one form of another.
  • The irregular factions, due to their nature as unofficial and underfunded formations using mostly ad-hoc equipment, are the kings of this. Both use older vehicles Soviet-era vehicles such as early russian BMP Infantry Fighting Vehicles and BRDM scout cars from as early as the 1960s, as well as PM Makarov and TT-34 Tokarev sidearms and relying on the old reliable DShK general purpose heavy machinegun.
    • The Middle-Eastern Insurgents mostly use outdated Eastern European weaponry, with the majority of their gear utilizing the early cold war soviet 7.62x39mm ammunition, and some weapons dating back to World War 2 such as the PPSh-41 submachinegun, the TT-33 Tokarev and the positively ancient 3-line rifle M1891, also known as the Mosin Nagant, designed and produced during the tail end of the 19th century.
    • The Irregular Militia forces are a little more modern when compared to their Middle-Eastern counterpart, using a mixture of up-to-date and slightly outdated Warsaw Pact and early NATO small arms, but they still often rely on older weapons, such as the Soviet Era weapons like the SVD marksman rifle, in use since the early 60s, and [M1942] divisional field gun, produced by 1941 and 1945, as well as outdated NATO weapons, such as the M16A2, which has been phased out in favour of the M16A4 and M4 rifles, and the old-school FN-FAL designed in the late 1940s, shooting the large 7.62x51mm NATO cartrige, and well on its way to retirement by the vast majority of its users.
  • Canada, the Middle Eastern Alliance and the Australian Defence Force use the Browning Hi-Power pistol, which began production before the Second World War. Additionally, while the Hi-Powers used by the MEA could be more modern ones, and the ADF ones are more modern, the Canadian ones are from the Second World War^note FN only stopped production in 2018, and the Hi-Power is still produced under license in several countries. The ADF uses the upgraded Mark III variant, released in 1988. However, the Canadian ones would be Inglis Hi-Powers, all of which were built during the Second World War, after production was moved there following the occupation of Belgium, and most of them were made for the Chinese Nationalists, only for the order to be cancelled when the war ended before they could be delivered. This is Truth in Television, as the ADF and Canadian Forces still use them, and the Canadians have been trying to replace them for nearly a decade^note Both the Australians and the Canadians began replacing them in mid-2023. Oddly enough, both chose variants of the Sig Sauer P320 to replace them.
  • The 3 western factions, Britain, Canada and the US, all rely on the classic .50 cal. Browning M2 heavy machinegun, which, while somewhat modernized, still remains largely the same gun that was originally thought up shortly after World War 1 as an anti-tank weapon, before being adopted into its current role as a general purpose heavy machinegun shortly before World War 2.
  • The Russian Ground Forces still rely on several pieces of Soviet-era armour, ranging from the fairly modern BTR-82A and BMP-2^note both adopted in the mid 1980s, to the aging T-72^note adopted in 1973 main battle tank and the quite old BRDM-2 and MT-LB^note in use since the 1960s scout car.
  • The Middle Eastern Alliance relies heavily on the West German G3 battle rifle, which was designed in the 1950s and still uses the old 7.62X51 NATO rounds, from when the idea of a high power "man stopper" cartridge was still in vogue for the main infantry firearm. As a result, MEA infantrymen are both incredibly hard hitting and at an incredible disadvantage when using fully automatic fire.
  • The USMC have a healthy contrast between their two standard-issue rifles: The modern and versatile M27 that doubles as both an infantry rifle and a fire support weapon, and the rapidly aging M16A4, a weapon that dates its lineage back to Vietnam.
• Character Class System: Separated between different "kits", which determines what equipment the player will be using, the same kits can come with variations on their selection (such as different optics for the weapon available). The amount of kits can be limited by various factors depending on the kit.
  • Rifleman/Fighter: The "grunt" class. Comes with a standard rifle, bayonet, grenades and it's the only one with an Ammo Bag, which he can supply themselves or their teamates.
  • Squad/Cell/Group Leader: The leader of a squad, has similar equipment to the rifleman, plus binoculars and the Rally Point, which is a deployable spawn point.
  • Automatic Rifleman: Comes armed with a light machine gun, which provides cover with suppressive fire and fire support.
  • Medic: The only one that comes with a medkit, which allows them to heal wounded teammates, and extra bandages to stop bleeding and revive downed teammates.
  • Grenadier: Armed with a rifle with an underslung grenade launcher, which allows you to fire either explosive grenades or smoke grenades.
  • Light Anti-Tank (LAT): Comes with either a lighter or disposable anti-tank launcher. Capable of fighting light armor or unarmored vehicles, but has more trouble with heavier APCs or tanks, though they carry more ammunition for their primary weapon than the Heavy Anti-Tank kit, meaning they can act as a Rifleman if necessary.
  • Marksman: Has a marksman rifle, which allows them to engage enemies at long distances.
  • Machine Gunner: Has a heavier machine gun compared to the AR. Which allows them to fire at enemies in long distances.
  • Heavy Anti-Tank (HAT): Has an anti-tank launcher with tandem rockets, which allows them to deal with heavier armored vehicles. However, due to the increased size of the launcher and rockets, they usually carry either less ammunition for their primary weapon than the Light Anti-Tank kit, or carry a smaller primary than the LAT kit, depending on the faction, making them less effective in a firefight than the LAT kit.
  • Combat Engineers: Exclusive to conventional factions. Equipped with mines and C4s, which allows them to sabotage behind enemy lines, as well as constructing faster.
  • Sapper: Exclusive to irregular factions. Equipped with binoculars, mines, TNTs and IEDs; allowing them to sabotage behind enemy lines and scout enemy positions.
  • Raider: Exclusive to the Insurgents. Comes armed with a PPSh-41 with drum and stick magazines and grenades. Excels in fighting in close-quarters in urban environments.
  • Crewman: Averts Universal Driver's Licence. Certain specialized vehicles, such as armored APCs, IFVs or tanks require a Crewman to drive them. Also available is the "Lead Crewman" role, which functions as a Crewman with the abilities of a Squad Leader.
  • Pilot: Necessary to fly helicopters. A Lead Pilot role is also available with similar benefits to the Lead Crewman.
• Close-Range Combatant: A few factions have a kit built around close-quarters fighting with an SMG.
  • Insurgents get the exclusive "Raider" kit, equipped with the potent PPSh-41 for rough close-range encounters.
  • The Irregular Militia get the "Infiltrator" kit as an equivalent, equipped with an AKS-74U with an extended magazine for a similar purpose.
  • The Russian Airborne Forces get the "Scout" equipped with the AS-VAL, a rifle that is internally supressed, giving it a unique advantage in a game where sound and situational awareness is vital.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Applied to remaining magazine/reloads/supplies/uses for your current weapon or item as displayed on your HUD and the only way to tell if you have any remaining ammo or not short of trying to fire or use the equipment. White for full and available, yellow for In-Use, orange for partially expended magazines, and clear/blank for expended and empty.
  • Averted for the factions themselves; the conventional armies can look very similar to each other at a glance if you don't notice some small details. The one case where this can come into play is colored smoke grenades, as each faction have their own selection. The US, Canada and China use red and blue, Russia uses orange and purple, the British use orange and yellow, the Insurgents use black and yellow, and the Irregular Militia uses yellow and green. With that knowledge, it is often possible to infer from a glance which side threw a particular smoke grenade.
• Combat Medic: The loadout for the medic class of all the forces in game includes 1 assault rifle (w/ 5 Magazines), a pistol (w/ 2 mags), 1 frag grenade, 3 smoke grenades (2 white smoke, 1 red/yellow smoke), 5 field dressings ("bandages"), their medic bag, and of course, an Entrenching Tool. While anyone can revive someone else or stop bleedings with the field dressings, medics not only have more of them, but the medic bag can restore health.
• Concussion Frags: This gets Averted; anti-tank weapons have different ammunition types, and trying to use the wrong round against your target will result in very little damage being done. Broadly speaking, there are three types of AT munitions: Frag rounds, which shred infantry over a wide area but doesn't penetrate armor; HEAT rounds, which can damage lighter vehicles but are ineffective against infantry; and Tandem rounds, which pierce thick armor but are very heavy and so can only be used effectively at shorter ranges.
• Cool Boat: On certain maps, the United States Marine Corps have the USS Essex as their home base, from which they can launch helicopters and other amphibious craft as they invade dry land. The Marines also get the Boring, but Practical RHIB Watercraft as a way of quickly shipping supplies and troops around the water.
• Crew of One: Averted just like in Project Reality. Tanks, APCs and other vehicles separate the driver and gunner into separate roles, and a spotter/commander may be necessary for them to be fully effective.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The Canadian-exclusive C79A2 optic is ranged for 200 meters, and it cannot go any lower than that. Many headshots have been missed thanks to most players being used to the 100 meter default ranging of every other optic.
• Death from Above: Americans, British and Canadian commanders can call an airstrike with a A-10 Warthog, Russian and MEA commanders can call a Su-25 Grach, while Chinese commanders can call in JH-7A rocket strike. Conventional faction commanders can call in howitzer barrages, while unconventional factions have heavy mortar barrages. There's also mortars that can be built by any of the factions and used to bomb down your enemies.
• Demolitions Expert: The Combat Engineer kit for conventional factions, and the Sapper for unconventional ones. Both examples can deploy landmines, which can subsequently be hidden or dug up using the shovel, and demolition charges which are on a timed fuse. The Combat Engineer additionally carries sandbags and razor wire for fortifications, while the Sapper comes equipped with a manually-controlled IED.
• Deployable Cover: Squad Leaders can deploy cover and other things that non-squad leader roles can build up with shovels.
• Desert Warfare: A lot of maps set in the Middle East and "Southern Asia" (the area based on Afghanistan and Pakistan) feature a desert or arid environment.
• Easter Egg: The "Fallujah" map features a spot-on recreation of the safe-house that Osama Bin Laden was killed in, complete with a crashed helicopter. It counts as an easter egg as the real-life compound was in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which is nowhere near Fallujah.
• Easy Logistics: This gets Zig-Zagged.
  • On the one hand, players must construct Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) manually, and further enhance those bases with spawn points, resupply stations and repair stations. To keep these up and running, as well as to help the base expand their defensive structures, ammo and construction supplies must be ferried from your main base to the FOBs. It is possible to disrupt the enemy's supply lines by hunting down the logistic trucks that are moving supplies. Additionally, all vehicles can carry some ammo supplies, which can help to top up the ammo counts of infantry fighting alongside them.
  • On the other hand, the game simplifies logistics into two basic resources: the aforementioned ammo and construction supplies. As long as a base or vehicle is holding enough points of ammo for what you need, your weapon type doesn't matter.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Intentionally averted. No special forces units are present in the game, nor are there plans to introduce them. However, the British have the option to play as the Parachute Regiment, and the Russians have two Guard Airborne Regiments they can play as, though the only effect on gameplay is what vehicles they get.
• Epic Tank-on-Tank Action: "Tallil Outskirts" (a wide-open desert map with an airfield in the center) is specifically made for vehicle-focused combat, and is even the only map to have a special "Tanks" game mode that grants each side six tanks each and lets them go wild.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: Averted, in that only squad leaders in conventional factions, and heavy machine guns, are equipped with tracer rounds. The lack of tracer rounds among the irregular factions can work to their advantage by making it much harder to tell where their shots are coming from.
• Faction Calculus:
  • Conventional factions are the Powerhouse, gaining access to superior weapons, vehicles and abilities over the irregular forces.
  • Irregular factions are Subversive, and make up for their weaker equipment with a range of unique traits that make them better at guerrilla warfare. For example, they don't use tracer rounds, the Insurgents get unique access to the 'Buddy Rally' system (where a deceased cell leader can assign another squad's rally point as their own), and the Sapper role gains access to remote-controlled IED's, which are more consistent than land mines as long as you can keep an eye on where they are deployed.
• Fragile Speedster: As a simple rule of thumb, the faster a vehicle, the less armor it has and the more vulnerable its crew and occupants will be.
• Friend or Foe?: Canada vs Russia matches tend to be *very* confusing because both armies use a dark green or desert camo pixelated uniform. A good way to differentiate is their armament (AK vs C7) or the shape of their helmets.
  • Any match which involve two factions using similar weaponry^note  such as Russia vs Insurgents or Irregular Militia, or US vs Canada will devolve into confusion, as knowing what sound a specific gun makes is crucial for spatial awareness meaning its much harder to make out if the automatic fire next to you is a friendly shooting a far away enemy, or an enemy squad breaching your position.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: Averted; as far as the 'unconventional armies use "evil" guns' trope goes, while the Irregular factions mostly use Soviet-sourced weapons, there are exceptions in both cases: the Insurgents can use FAL and G3 variants, while the Irregular Militia, alongside the FAL, have the M4 and M249 SAW among their weapon selection. The MEA primarily uses late 20th century West German small arms^note  primarily the G3 battle rifle in various configurations with Soviet heavy weapons and vehicles.
  • Played straight with the opposing conventional forces. The American, British, Canadian and Australian factions primarily armed with NATO and Western weapons and vehicles, while their Russian and Chinese adversaries almost exclusively uses its Eastern counterparts.
• Grenade Launcher: The "Grenadier" class has an underslung grenade launcher with an assault rifle. You can use it to support your squad with High Explosive grenade volleys or bomb people with smoke grenades.
• Heal Thyself: Completely averted, a soldier can stop their own bleeding but will need to find a medic to be healed.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: PLA Navy Marine Corps wear a naval blue camouflage that makes them highly visible. Hilariously, it comes in two variants: "desert" and "woodland", the only change is the camouflage of the body armor, the rest is still the same.
• Homing Projectile: The British Army's NLAW features a Predictive Line-of-Sight system. Before firing, the user traces the movement of their target before firing the rocket, and the rocket will follow a trajectory that assumes the target is continuing to move at the same speed and direction.
• Improvised Weapon: The Insurgents faction has access to the "Hell Cannon", a homemade, ginormous mortar which fires a "Blessed Propane Tank" over distances of around 900 meters, it has more or less the same effect as a support fire artillery shell.
• Instant Death Bullet: Averted. Being shot will make you bleed, but you will bleed out if you don't bandage yourself.
• Invaded States of America: Downplayed, but there are a pair of maps are set in Canada, featuring the Russians as the opposing army, though one variant has Canada vs the Eastern European Irregular Militia. Strangely, both are set in eastern Canada, far away from Russia. In previous versions, one map layer featured the United States vs Canada, in case you wanted to get really weird.
• La Résistance: The Irregular Militia, based on Eastern European nationalist, communist and religious extremist armed groups, but also, being used as a stand-in for other separatist or resistance groups in Northern Europe and North America. However, even if they are standing in for, say, a Newfoundlander separatist militia, the soldiers and announcer still use almost exclusively Warsaw Pact weaponry and speak Russian.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Normally dished out by an UB-32 rocket pod, available in several different flavours.
  • The Middle Eastern Alliance's variants of the BRDM-2 scout car and the MT-LBM APC sometimes come with a pod mounted atop the gun turret, enabling them to fire rockets with quite a high degree of precision.
  • The Irregular factions also sometimes get access to a rocket armed technical, which boils down to a pickup truck with a salvaged pod stuck to the back, however, the fact that its damn near impossible to aim, means its normally relegated to indirect fire support duties.
  • The most traditional flavour comes from Russian Su-25 Grach, Chinese Xi'an JH-7A, and American/Australian F/A-18 Hornet jets, which can be called in for strafing runs by the Russian Ground Forces, People's Liberation Army, and United States Marine Corps/Australian Defense Force respectively.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The Insurgents have access to the unique "Raider" kit, which is equipped with a PPSh-41 and excels as a Close-Range Combatant class.
  • The Canadian Armed Forces tend to have some... unique equipment choices and loadouts.
    • Their standard long-range rifle optic is the C79A2, which uniquely is ranged for 200m rather than they typical 100m for equivalent scopes. This makes it very easy to accidentally overshoot your target if you don't adjust to this quirk.
    • The marksman rifle is the C14 Timberwolf. Which is actually a bolt-action sniper rifle rather then a semi-automatic marksman rifle like the other conventional factions. This reflected in the kit selection screen where the Canadian marksman is instead a "Sniper".
    • The Heavy Anti-Tank class, unlike their fellow Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle users, receive anti-infantry High Explosive rounds along with the usual AT ammunition, meaning they not only are a nightmare to armoured vehicles, they can also blow up entire entrenched infantry squads should they get a good shot or two off.
  • The British have 2 distinct marksman classes, the regular fire-support specialist marksman, packing the regular semi-automatic Designated Marksman Rifle in a L129A1; and the direct combat Marksman, which uses the L86A2 LSW, a long-barrel fire support rifle that functions closer to a magazine fed light machinegun than an actual Designated Marksman Rifle or Sniper Rifle.^note In the real world, the L86A2 LSW largely failed in its role as an infantry support weapon due to its magazine-fed nature and the infamous reliability issues that plagued the early SA80-derived weapons, but it found a second lease on life as a marksman rifle thanks to its good accuracy and high power.
  • The Middle Eastern Alliance is fairly unique for its very harmonised weapon selection; with the exception of the Machine Gunner, everybody uses a G3 variant. In a game where identifying weapon sounds can give you a big situational awareness advantage, this makes going up against the MEA fairly unique.
  • The United States Marine Corps are uniquely built around launching amphibious assaults as their defining strategy. Some maps feature the USS Essex amphibious assault ship from which the Marines can launch helicopters and amphibious craft from, resulting in the need to establish a beachhead on invasion maps before they can spawn in ground vehicles. To help with logistics, the AAVC-7A1 holds the unique distinction of being the only armored vehicle that can ferry construction supplies.
  • The Russian Airborne Forces get the Scout class equipped with the AS-VAL, the game's first supressed weapon, giving it a major advantage for more stealthy or Confusion Fu tactics.
  • The People's Liberation Army has a couple of unusual characteristics on their equipment.
    • Most anti tank kits in the game struggle somewhat with the issue of range finding, which is very important as most rockets or anti tank projectiles are very succeptible to bullet drop, meaning misjudging the distance to a target by something like 10 meters can be the difference between killing it and getting whacked by a 30 milimiter autocannon shell. The PLA's Heavy Anti Tank kit laughs in the face of that problem since it has a digital rangefinder built into its gun.
    • The main tracked IFV, the ZBD-04A, which packs a rare double gun turret, with both a 100 milimiter cannon and a 30 milimiter autocannon being used concurrently. It also has its sights zeroed at 1 kilometer rather than the usual 300 or 400 meters most armoured vehicles have, which, when combined with the absurd velocity of its 30mm. gun and the wire guided missile it fires, makes it a terrifying opponent in extreme range fights.
    • The standard transport truck, which most factions just ignore or use as a throwaway tool, since it literally just ferries troops around, receives a secondary function with the PLA, as they have machineguns, either of the light, or heavy varieries mounted on them to provide some extra fire support in a pinch. It also makes them surprisingly viable as scout vehicles.
• Middle Eastern Coalition: The Middle Eastern Alliance, which is directly based on the Trope Namer from Battlefield and Squad's predecessor Project Reality. Its real-life counter-part is based off of a mixture of Iran and Iraq; as they use German firearms (G3 variants and the MG3 machinegun) and Russian vehicles—as well as the Simir, based on the Iranian-made Safir— while their infantry uses US-made Six-Color Desert Pattern uniforms and PASGT helmets, simlar how Iraqi soldiers were armed post-2003. To make matters more complicated, Squad Leaders and announcers speak in Arabic and the foot soldiers speakin Kurdish.
• Middle Eastern Terrorists: The Insurgents. The game does make an effort to avoid portraying them as one-note stereotypes, and instead bases them on an amalgamation of various Middle Eastern communist, Islamic and nationalist militias.
• Mighty Glacier: The Middle Eastern Alliance's MO, equipped with the supremely hard hitting G3A3 battle rifle and normally backed up indirect fire capable IFVs and APCs, they work best when they take up defensive positions and make their attackers miserable, either by picking them off from a distance, or by raining hell on them with rocket barrages. The cost of their excellence in that regard is having pretty slow vehicles overall and not being very well equipped for fast strike operations, as their weaponry isn't well suited for full-auto fire.
  • The British armoured contingents are also quite effective in that regard, with the FV510 IFV, which is literally impermeable to autocannon and light AT fire if hit from the front, at the price of being rather slow and having an L21A1 RARDEN as its main weapon, a very unwieldy, semi-auto, clip fed autocannon that must be reloaded every 3 shots. Sometimes, however, the brits have access to the FV520 IFV, which packs a fully automatic 40mm autocannon, along with stabilization and not too dissimilar durability, making it more or less the most horrifying IFV to run into.
• One Bullet Clips: Averted. Individual magazines and their ammunition are tracked.
• One-Man Army: Averted. The cornerstone of the game is teamwork and cooperation. This is reinforced by control points requiring a minimum 2-man team to capture.
• Outside Ride: The infantry of unconventional factions are able to ride around on the hulls of tanks as transport; the more professional conventional armies do not have this ability.
• Palette Swap: The PLA Amphibious Ground Forces are mostly based on the PLA Navy Marine Corps, but with woodland rather than naval blue camouflage.
• Pre-Explosion Buildup: Setting off an IED takes a moment as the Sapper "calls" the detonator using a burner phone, complete with ringtone.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon:
  • Some roles, primarily Squad Leaders and weapon specialists, carry a pistol for emergency use. They're relatively potent at close range, but have poor accuracy and due to their low ammo capacity are extremely risky to use in prolonged fights.
  • Crewman and Pilot roles are often equipped with carbines for when they are forced to bail from their vehicles. Carbines function similar to assault rifles, but have less spare ammo and are less accurate due to a mix of their shorter barrels and a lack of attached optics. The Insurgents get the most extreme example as their Crewman roles are given a Vz. 61 Škorpion for protection, a machine pistol with all of its expected drawbacks. At least this game actually depicts the Škorpion's stock being properly used!
• Ring Menu: Uses this for commands and building.
• Scenery Porn: The new engine makes for some really pretty maps, featuring lush Eastern European forests, vast deserts, hilly South-Asian woodlands, and packed urban sprawl.
• Semper Fi: The United States Marine Corps are present here. They certainly fill a more specialist and elite niche compared to the United States Army, placing a greater emphasis on amphibious capabilities and Fragile Speedster vehicles. Their equipment choices also tend to be more outdated than the Army's, making them more of a guerrilla force rather than a straight upgrade.
• Suicide Attack: A common tactic when playing as the irregulars is to stick a dozen cellphone triggered IEDs into a bike, car or player, ram them into a concentrated enemy position and then blow it all sky-high. When applied correctly, this tactic will almost inevitably^note  with the only way to survive being to use the car bomb technique rather than carrying the bomb themselves, bail out before the detonation occurs, then running the opposite way as fast as humanly possible end with the death of the poor sap whose job it was to get the explosives to their destination.
• Shoot the Medic First: Medics are the only class to carry medic bags which can heal others, as well as five bandage kits for stabilizing themselves and others (as opposed to the one or two others normally carry). As dying comes with a hefty time restriction, either by spawning all the way back at the main base, minutes away from the front, or at least a 30+ second minimum death/incapacitated time before respawning at a FOB or Rally Point, removing the medic from the fight makes survival much harder for the rest of their squad.
• Smoke Out: Smoke cover is vital to move across open fields and flank enemy positions, as well as obscuring a vehicle's position in order to escape from ambushes and infantry attacks. Of note is that some roles gain access to colored smoke, which can be used to mark and differentiate targets.
• Sprint Meter: Has one, although you can keep running when you're out of it, it just slows your sprinting. It recharges if you stand still and slowly if you walk. Aim stabilization is also quite affected by a depleted stamina meter, as the sway increases if the player is tired
• Support Power: The Commander can call in off-map abilities as long as they are close to a Spawn Bunker for conventional factions, or a Spawn Bunker or vehicle for Irregular factions. These abilities include:
  • A UAV for conventional factions, which circles an area for a limited amount of time, and provides an aerial camera the commander can look at. Irregulars instead use a handheld drone, which must be directly controlled by the commander and can be easily shot out of the sky (The UAV can also be shot down, but guided missiles are the only weapons that have any reasonable chance to do so), but can also cover a much wider area, or strapped with an IED to serve as a flying bomb.
  • Conventional factions can call in 155mm Artillery for a static or creeping barrage. Irregular factions can call in a Heavy Mortar strike, which is less powerful and can only be called in as a static barrage, but whereas the 155mm Artillery strike will fire 'ranging shots' before beginning the main barrage, the Heavy Mortars will begin the barrage immediately, giving them the element of surprise.
  • Conventional factions only can call in Close Air Support: An A-10 Warthog gun run for the US, CAF and GB, or an Su-25 Frogfoot, F/A 18 Hornet, and JH-7A rocket strike for RGF, ADF/USMC, and PLA respectively.
• Tank Goodness: Tanks are very much the most single powerful entity in the battlefield, as they carry relatively fast firing the biggest guns in the battlefield in a mobile, very resilient package, among them are:
  • The Americans (US Army and USMC) and Australians gets M1 Abrams with different variants of each faction.
  • The British get the FV4034 "Challenger 2".
  • The Canadians get the Leopard 2.
  • Both unconventional factions get the T-62.
  • The Russians get the T-72B3.
  • The Middle Eastern Alliance can use both the T-62 and the T-72AV.
  • The Chinese get the ZTZ-99A, which were derived from T-72s above.
• Urban Warfare: The maps Mutaha, Al-Basrah and Fallujah are all set urban environments, mixed with some Desert Warfare as they are set in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Narva is an urban environment set in Estonia, being a somewhat modified depiction of the third-largest city in the country, most likely chosen as it lies on the border with Russia, has a large Russian population^note Due to the Soviets refusing to let the Estonian residents return after taking the city during the Second World War that attempted to join Russia a few times shortly after the fall of the USSR^note Most of the Russian population didn't actually want to join Russia, it was primarily local leaders who were holdovers from the USSR, and there have been disputes between Russia and Estonia over the exact border between them in the region Narva is in, with the presence of the US, UK, and Canada being justified by Estonia being part of NATO.
• Universal Driver's Licence: Averted. Simple vehicles, such as trucks and armored recon vehicles, can be driven by anybody. More complex vehicles, such as Infantry Fighting Vehicles and tanks, require the dedicated Crewmen role to be operated. Helicopters also require their own Pilot role.
• War Is Hell: Being a somewhat faithful depiction of what modern, conventional war is, many matches can be pretty intense and reflect the horrors of war in a dehumanizing way.
• Weaponised Car: Both of the Irregular factions get access to a Technical pick-up. They can be used as troop or supply transport, or be equipped with a number of weapons that allow the humble technical to fill several roles in combat. While it is most commonly used as a raider vehicle^note  when armed with a heavy machinegun, it can also fill the role of long range anti-tank^note  when packing an SPG-9 Kopye recoilless rifle, anti air^note  with the ZSU-23, and even as an IFV^note  with the jury-rigged BMP-1 turret atop it, keep in mind that "Infantry Fighting Vehicle" is being used very charitably here.
• Winter Warfare: The map Nanisivik was set in the tundra of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and Belaya is set in a wintery Eastern European island. Goose Bay, a reworked version of Nanisivik that replaced it in 2.0, takes place in Labrador during the winter.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: The game features two types of supplies: Ammo and Construction. Your main base has an unlimited quantity of both, but they must be transported to your Forward Operating Bases using logistics trucks and helicopters. Ammo supplies are used to resupply depleted ammo for infantry, vehicles and weapon emplacements. All vehicles can also carry a small amount of ammo with them to resupply infantry on the frontlines. Construction supplies are used to repair vehicles, as well as to build any structure more complex than your basic FOB radio.