Area Of Operations

AREA OF OPERATIONS

Hold the AO. Build the FOB. Hunt the Caches.

>> Read the Area Of Operations Player Guide (PDF) <<

Area Of Operations is a territorial game mode for Squad. Forget lanes of capture points: every match is fought over one AO picked at random from the map. Deaths cost tickets like normal, but the only way to gain tickets is to hold ground inside the AO with the right assets, outnumber the enemy there, and find and destroy their positions before they bleed you dry.

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Features

• A new AO every match on 23 maps, with an Inner AO worth double.
• Two ways to fight: conventional armies run a tough FOB and HESCO Patrol Bases, irregular forces hide Caches.
• Hold the ground: outnumber the enemy inside the AO and they bleed tickets.
• Hunt and be hunted: enemy positions show up as orange search areas over time.
• Live ticket panel showing who's ahead and how fast tickets are flowing.
• Mercy Bleed punishes teams that throw bodies into a lost fight.
• Fully configurable by server admins.

How a match works

• Both teams start with 300 tickets.
• A team at 0 tickets loses. Otherwise the team with more tickets wins when time runs out (120 min, 150 min on large maps).
• Standing in the AO earns nothing by itself. Tickets come from what you build there, paid once a minute, and from outnumbering the enemy in the AO.

Conventional forces

The FOB: your ticket engine

• Your first radio becomes the team's only FOB. It comes up fully built with double health.
• It earns +2 tickets/min in the Inner AO, +1 in the AO, nothing outside it.
• One HAB per FOB. The HAB only stops spawning when 2 or more enemies are within 20 m of it.
• No overrun. To take a FOB out you have to blow it up or dig it out with shovels. If enemy fire knocks the radio below half-built, it bleeds out. Either way the owners lose 100 tickets.
• Packing up your own FOB is free, unless the enemy hit it in the last 30 seconds.
• After 5 minutes the enemy's leaders get an orange search area around it.

Patrol Base: a forward spawn with a payoff

• Every squad leader carries a Patrol Base: a small HESCO position with camo nets and firing positions. Your team spawns inside its walls 60 s after placing.
• Hold it for 15 minutes and the enemy loses 75 tickets. Lose it (2 C4 / 2 IEDs, or enemy shovels) and your team loses 25.
• One per team at a time, 10-minute cooldown, located after 5 minutes.

Irregular forces: Insurgents (MEI), IMF, WPMC, CRF

• No radios. Squad leaders carry Caches instead (hidden weapons caches): up to 3 per squad leader and 3 per team.
• Like a rally point, you need a squad member within 8 m to place one.
• A Cache becomes a spawn point after 60 s (CACHE on the deploy screen). Enemies nearby don't block it, but a damaged Cache spawns slower.
• It resupplies ammo: starts with 100 and refills +50 a minute, up to 500.
• Each Cache drains the enemy 1 ticket/min.
• Explosives only: 2 C4 or 2 IEDs destroy it. Gunfire does nothing and shovels can't dig it down.
• A Cache destroyed by the enemy costs its team 10 tickets. The enemy gets a search area around it after 10 minutes.

AO lead bleed

Have more living players inside the AO than the enemy for a full minute and they start to bleed (servers with 30+ players): [table] [tr][th]Your lead in the AO[/th][th]Enemy loses[/th][/tr] [tr][td]10-14[/td][td]1 ticket/min[/td][/tr] [tr][td]15-19[/td][td]3 tickets/min[/td][/tr] [tr][td]20-24[/td][td]6 tickets/min[/td][/tr] [tr][td]25-29[/td][td]10 tickets/min[/td][/tr] [tr][td]30+[/td][td]15 tickets/min[/td][/tr] [/table]

Tickets at a glance

[table] [tr][th]What happens[/th][th]Tickets[/th][/tr] [tr][td]Your FOB in the Inner AO / AO[/td][td]+2 / +1 per minute[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Each enemy Cache standing[/td][td]-1 per minute[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Outnumbered in the AO[/td][td]-1 to -15 per minute[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Enemy Patrol Base holds 15 minutes[/td][td]-75[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Your FOB is destroyed[/td][td]-100[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Your Patrol Base is destroyed[/td][td]-25[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Your Cache is destroyed[/td][td]-10[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Packing up your own FOB / Cache[/td][td]free (unless hit in the last 30 s)[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Mercy Bleed[/td][td]-1 every 10 s, up to 2 minutes[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Deaths and vehicles[/td][td]As in normal Squad[/td][/tr] [/table]

Mercy Bleed

If a team of 10 or more loses half its players inside the AO within 3 minutes, it bleeds 1 ticket every 10 seconds for up to 2 minutes, or until 3 of its soldiers are alive in the Inner AO again.

Intel and HUD

• Ticket panel (top-right): Leads By / Trails By and your live Ticket Flow per minute.
• Search areas: orange 150 m circles appear around enemy FOBs, Patrol Bases and Caches over time. They're shown to squad leaders and the commander, and they're offset from the target, so sweep the whole circle. Pass the intel on over comms.

Maps: 23 layers

Al Basrah, Anvil, Black Coast, Chora, Fallujah, Fool's Road, Goose Bay, Gorodok, Harju, Kamdesh, Kohat, Kokan, Lashkar, Logar, Manicouagan, Mestia, Mutaha, Narva, Sanxian Islands, Skorpo, Sumari, Tallil, Yehorivka.

Server admins

Layer names are <Map>_AreaOfOperations_v1, for example Sumari_AreaOfOperations_v1 or AlBasrah_AreaOfOperations_v1. Add them to LayerRotation.cfg / LayerVoting.cfg.