Squad

Overview

Squad is a tactical First Person Shooter set in modern day with real world armies, it is a spiritual sequel to the Project Reality modification for Battlefield 2 and is being developed by Offworld Industries (OWI), a team made up of former PR developers. Squad is using Unreal Engine 4.

Squad features 100 player servers, deployable assets and vehicles with a strong focus on gameplay elements that emphasize realism, communication and teamwork without sacrificing accessibility.

The game was funded with Kickstarter and was released in on Steam Early Access on December 14th, 2015. The full 1.0 release of the game was on September 23rd, 2020.

Gameplay

Squad is a modern military, class based FPS where two opposing teams battle it out in a variety of game modes. The game features infantry based combat supplemented by armored vehicles, players will be able to drive tanks and pilot helicopters.

The developers are seeking to bridge the gap between arcade style shooters such as Battlefield and military simulators like ArmA.

Squad features 50 vs. 50 team battles, each team can be divided in to 9 squads of up to 9 players each, there will be a Commander mode as well.

While Squad takes a lot of inspiration from its roots in Project Reality: BF2, the game also features several new concepts that weren't possible with the BF2 engine. These include full body awareness, leaning, weapon sway and the ability to drag fallen teammates in to safety.

Squad's HUD is minimalistic and only displays essential information such as the compass in the bottom of the screen, there is no mini-map and nor any ammo count for weapons, only the amount of magazines left.

Infantry movement, stances and stamina influences weapon sway but the player can hold his breath in order to stabilize the weapon for a short period of time. There is also momentum to the player's movement while sprinting.

Because teamwork is a prime focus of the game, there is a asset claiming system in place, meaning only Squad leaders can unlock vehicles for their squad to use.

Communication

Since success in Squad relies heavily on teamwork and coordination, there are several ways for the commander, squad leaders (SL) and grunts to talk to their teammates over VoIP, these methods include:

• Global squad leader channel where SL & Commander can talk to all other SL simultaneously.
• Squad leader channel where SL & Commander can talk to a specific SL using Numpad 1-9.
• Squad channel where SL and his members can talk to each other.
• Local positional speech for talking to teammates in close proximity.

Local positional speech can not be heard by the enemy team, OWI noted that this will only result in trolling and will make people use team text chat or external VoIP software instead.

Deployables, logistics and spawn system

There are three different ways to spawn in on the map.

Main Base

The original spawn point where the whole team can spawn in, it is the only spawn point available at the start of the round and can't be disabled by either team.

Forward Operating Base (FOB)

FOBs are player constructed spawn points where the whole team can spawn in. Squad leaders can put down framework for deployable assets (such as Barbed wire, Hesco walls, Mortar pits and Heavy Machinegun nests) near the FOB which then can be built by other players with Entrenching tools.

FOBs can only be constructed 400 meters apart.

FOBs will only become active after a couple of minutes unless supplies have been dropped off by a logistics vehicle.

Rally point (RP)

Rally points can be placed by a Squad leader and is limited to his squad, each squad can only have one RP active at a time. Rally points can be placed if the SL has got a few members nearby but will disappear if enemies are close. For each placement, the RP can be used nine times.

Kit role system

Squad features a Kit role system with many different types of classes to choose from. Since the game is based around real world conflicts, players are only be able to use standard issue gear. There is some amount of weapon customization however, such as different types of sights and attachments.

Many of the kits require two or more people to be in the same squad, if a player leaves or is kicked out of a squad then he will loose his current kit and receive a "Recruit" kit instead.

There's a limit to how many of each kit can be in a squad and on the team.

Command & Support roles

• Squad leader
• Engineer
• Medic

Squad roles

• Rifleman
• Crewman
• Pilot

Direct combat roles

• Automatic Rifleman
• Breacher
• Grenadier
• Light Anti-tank
• Marksman

Specialist roles

• Anti-air
• Heavy Anti-tank
• Reconnaissance

Game modes

Advance and Secure (AAS)

AAS is a conquest style game mode where two opposing teams attack and/or defend locations on the map in a linear or parallel fashion, trying to secure more territory.

The areas have to be captured in order and the status of each flag (whether one team has a cap advantage or if it's neutral) decides which locations are in play.

Each team start with a set amount of tickets (seen in the top right of the screen), these will start to drain as players die and objectives are lost. The team which tickets drop to zero first looses.

Insurgency (INS)

Insurgency is an asymmetrical game mode where a conventional force tries to track down and destroy insurgent weapon caches, the location of these are randomized and the conventional force have to gather intelligence (by neutralizing the insurgents) to find each one.

The conventional force start with a set amount of tickets similar to the AAS game mode while the insurgent's are unlimited and only need to make sure the caches aren't destroyed.

Factions

Regular armies

Modelled after their real world equivalents, these factions have access to the latest military technology but only standard issue gear.

• British Army
• Russian Army
• United States Army

Irregular armies

Irregular armies are modelled after various rebel and terrorist groups, they use a wide variety of older equipment but also improvised vehicles and explosives.

• Insurgents
• Militia

Maps

Eastern Europe

• Fool's road (Project Reality remake)
• Gorodok
• Narva
• Operation First Light
• Yehorivka

Middle East

• Chora
• Kohat toi
• Kokan (Project Reality remake)
• Logar Valley
• Sumari Bala

Southern Asia

• Al Basrah (Project Reality remake)
• Fallujah (Project Reality remake)

There's also a training map (Jensen's Range) for practising with various weapons and vehicles.

Equipment

Infantry weapons

Pistols

• Beretta M92FS
• Glock 17
• Makarov PM
• MP-443
• TT33

Submachine guns

• PPSh-41

Assault rifles

• M4 and variant: M4A1
• Kalashnikov AK-74 and variants: AKS-74, AK-74M, AKS-74M, AKS-74U
• Kalashnikov AKM and variants: AKMS, PM MD. 65, AMD 65
• L85A2

Battle rifles

• G3A3

Semi-automatic carbines

• SKS

Light machine guns

• Kalashnikov RPK and variants: RPK-74, RPK-74M
• L110A2
• M240B
• M249 SAW
• PKM
• PKP Pecheneg

Shotguns

• Benelli M4
• KS-23
• Remington 870

Sniper rifles

• M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System
• SVD Dragunov

Rocket launchers

• FGM-148 Javelin
• M72A7 LAW
• RPG-26
• RPG-29
• RPG-7

Grenades

• F1 Frag
• Incendiary
• L109A1 Frag
  
• M67 Frag
• M18 Smoke
• RGD-5 Frag
• RKG-3 Anti-Tank

Mines

• TM-62

Misc

• Knife
• Remote detonated IED

Mounted weapons

Machineguns

• Browning M2A1
• DshK
• NSV and variant: NSVT
• PKT

Autocannons

• 2A72 30mm

Anti-tank

• BGM-71 TOW
• SPG-9 Kopye Recoilless Gun

Anti-air

• ZU-23 Anti-Aircraft Gun

Mortars

• M1937 82mm
• M252 81mm
• Podnos 2B14

Misc gear

• Ammunition bag
• Binoculars
• Entrenching tool
• Field dressing
• First aid kit
• Portable ladder

Vehicles

Motorbikes

• MINSK 400

Light motorised

• BRDM-2
• M1151 Enhanced Armament Carrier
• Technicals

MRAP

• Oshkosh M-ATV

Armored Personnel Carriers

• BTR-80 and variant: BTR-82A
• Stryker ICV
• MT-LB and variant: MT-LBM 6M

Helicopters

• UH-60M Blackhawk

Trucks

• M939
• MAN Support vehicle
• URAL 375-D
• URAL 4320

Development

2014

Development on Squad started in 2014 after several developers of the Project Reality: BF2 mod realized that the Project Reality 2 (made by a separate team) game would not see the light of day.

Hoping to create a true spiritual sequel to the mod they worked on, these PR:BF2 developers formed Offworld Industries and started to work on Squad, a commercial game using Unreal Engine 4.

Squad was announced on October 10th, 2014 with the team showcasing several screenshots and a 12 minute gameplay video of the pre-Alpha state of the project. Offworld Industries planned to start a Kickstarter campaign later that year.

In November the developers announced that the crowd-funding campaign had been postponed till 2015.

2015

On Januray 29th Offworld launched the official website, which confirmed 100 player servers and asset construction.

In April the developers launched the game on Steam Greenlight, it reached the #1 spot in two days and got accepted within a week.

In May Offworld introduced their first iteration of the Deployables and Kit role systems, they also opened up the test environment and successfully ran their first 100 player server. Later that month they launched their Kickstarter and reached their base goal of $184,000 CAD in five days, the crowdfunding campaign ended on June 27th, reaching $434,805 and two stretch goals.

In September Squad moved in to a closed Alpha state, gameplay functionality such as reviving and bleeding were added to the game, later in December the game was made made available on Steam with two more playable factions added.

Squad launched on Steam Early Access on December 15th.

2016

While the game received a steady stream of updates, Squad's internal systems for animations and vehicle handling would have be completely reworked which delayed the introduction of vehicles significantly. Some of Squad's early adopters with AMD CPUs also criticized the game for running poorly on their systems.

In early August OWI finally released Alpha version 7 which introduced vehicles to the game.

2020

On September 23rd, 2020 the game was officially released as the full 1.0 release out of Early Access.

Modifications

Squad has supported modding since early Alpha and was the second game to be featured in the Unreal Engine Development kit after ARK.

Post Scriptum: The Bloody Seventh is an upcoming stand-alone game which is being developed using Squad's Unreal Engine 4 framework, it is set during World War II and covers the events of Operation Market Garden. It is being developed by a team called Periscope Games. The game will feature combined arms warfare on a large scale between British and German troops.

Escalation 1985 is another game which uses some of Squad's coding framework.

System Requirements

PC

External links

• Official website
• Steam store
• Kickstarter
• Project Reality: BF2