Playing Battlefield 6 online is like your boot-camp platoon: a mixed bag of great humans, massive turds, and everything in-between.
In some matches, you have players who want to work as a team. In others, you’re punching the air because they only care about their kill/death ratio. The former is definitely a lot more fun than the latter, but one thing is absolutely missing from most matches—support by fire.
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Sure, some players will make sure there’s sniper support or mortar support, but a lot of times, you’re throwing bodies at objectives and hoping you eventually overwhelm the enemy. That’s where you need the machine-gun support.
In real life, machine guns provide high-volume fire to suppress enemy positions and allow the assaulting element to close in. While it may not be necessary, it’s a video game after all. It is still a lot more fun to not die constantly during an assault, because you don’t have anyone suppressing the enemy.
Here’s why you need a support by fire:
High Volume of Fire
Suppressing an enemy mostly means keeping their heads down.
The idea is that, if their heads are down, they’re not shooting at you. If the enemy isn’t shooting at you, then you can move. If you can move, then you can take the objective.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy; it just makes it easier. A good machine-gun support by fire will suppress the enemy with a high volume of fire. A great machine-gun support by fire will eliminate enemy opposition with an accurate high volume of fire. Typically, you want to have at least two machine guns ripping belts on your objective, but just one works most of the time in Battlefield 6.
Fixing the Enemy
A key piece necessary for the assaulting element to close on the objective is a fixed enemy. That just means the enemy can’t move because, if they do, they turn into Swiss cheese.
By keeping the enemy in one place, you prevent them from flanking you. This allows you to take an objective from the enemy more easily. Again, not easy, just easier. If you have more than one gun, you might even use a tactic called “gates and lanes,” where you fire diagonally from two positions onto the objective, then shift fire to create a lane for the assaulting element to push through the center.
Once you fix the enemy, you can sweep the objective.
Overwatch
While a major goal of utilizing a support by fire is fixing the enemy so the assaulting element can maneuver onto the objective, there’s still the matter of taking the objective.
Since you have to sit there for a bit, your support by fire can help you by providing overwatch. This just means they’re watching any areas you can’t see from the objective, and eliminating targets of opportunity who may circle back and defend the objective.
The danger in this is that, if there aren’t enemies on the objective, they may come to take out your support by fire. So make sure you’ve either got rear security, or you look around you every once in a while.
It’s Fun
Being a machine gunner in a support by fire is fun in real life, and Battlefield 6 makes it almost as fun in the game.
Most maps provide plenty of areas to set up a machine-gun support by fire, with excellent fields of fire. While it’s also fun to attack the objective, it’s great to wipe out lots of enemy players and give your teammates the ability to take the objective. If you’re one of those players whose sole focus is kill/death ratio, then being a support by fire is a great approach for that goal.
At the end of the day, it’s just a video game, and you can play however you want.
There’s no real-world impact of winning or losing in Battlefield 6, but it’s still a lot of fun to try to implement real-life strategy. Thankfully, it’s not Arma, and you won’t get kicked out of the game for playing your own way.
Just don’t be one of those weirdos.
