Should I give ammo or health when asked or leave it in a central spot?

Purg writes… Here

I’m not sure if you realise but when you drop and ammo pack, move on, drop another ammo pack, the previous ammo pack disappears after a couple of seconds..?

I read Milans post as “I drop mine at this flag and someone else drops it at another flag. Now the team has ammo at two points!”. I think this works reasonably well for ammo since it is not required as frequently as health in Battle field 3. On the rare occasion I play support this is what I do. Either at a flag or at a specific point that has lots of combat. For example if we are attacking Gas Station from Hilltop on Caspian I try to leave some in the buildings just before Gas Station so anyone else coming through there can ammo up.

I have players run up to me asking for health frequently in BF3. I drop packs whenever the cool down is up but I move around all the time so the chance of it being where I am is rather low. People get annoyed and unload their weapon at me if I don’t comply instantly with their demands. There is a health pack 10 feet behind me that I just dropped. Of course I drop another when available.. but the 5 seconds wait was too long for them. Says a lot for the mentality of the Battlefield 3 pub player.

I think it goes both ways. Yes people don’t drop health or ammo, but at the same time walking 20m to get ammo is probably going to work better than annoying someone for it given that.. people don’t drop it. Apparently. I tend to see a few medpacks and an ammo box at a flag, so think the problem quite often lies with the recipient rather than the donor.

What to do?

There are really only two options here.

• Drop ammo at one point on the battlefield and leave it
• Forever drop when poeple ask/when the cool down is up/when it is needed

Dropping when the cool down is up or when asked/needed seems to be the most obvious way to go. I mainly play assault and it is how I operate the majority of the time. Depending on your play style you need to heal yourself frequently so leaving a health pack lying around somewhere else is not going to be too useful. On the flip side if you have just finished an encounter you do not always need to heal up too 100% straight away. The other classes operate just fine without this crutch, as does assault when you rock an M320 or M26.

Less required by far is ammo. I think most pub players (myself included) are not good enough to run out of ammo on the assault rifles or carbines, execpt in rare situations. Even fairly good players run around a 1-1 KDR, so will usually die before using their ammo, even without ammo specialisation. Players should learn to use the map to find ammo.

If you plan to drop when possible I suggest a little more caution than I have used in the past. I have many deaths from running into firefights, dropping ammo and then dying because I have a health pack in my hands. You have been warned!

Dropping at a specific point that requires ammo or health frequently. This one is much trickier and depends entierly on the map and how the map is being played. Examples of where I would do this almost always is metro and bazaar. If you decide to take this route know that some people will be annoyed at you for not complying with their demands.

You can keep tabs on your ammo pack by watching points gained from resupplies. One problem with this method is the pack can be destroyed while you are on the other side of the map and cannot monitor it. For this method to be effective you have to watch the flow of the battle and points gained from resupplies. If you are playing metro and leave your ammo box somewhere near escalators and your team pushes past, you need to find a new high traffic area and more it accordingly. Keeping your ammo pack back from the front line/behind a wall works well as it protects it and stops it being destroyed by random fire. It may result is less quick points but you will have to babysit it less.

Keeping in mind where grenades/explosives/RPGs can go when dropping your specific point ammo pack is a good idea. The maps and places you want to utilise this method in Battlefield 3 tend to be quite spammy. Not dropping near walls that receive RPGs/M320s frequently is a good idea.