"Hardened by Battle is a new mod born a few months ago that aims to incentivize team play and coordination by modifying some base Squad mechanics.
It’s not a mil-sim or a hardcore mod: our goal is to favour more thoughtful approaches instead. With this idea in mind we slowed down the gameplay pace both in tactical deployment and during firefights. Soldier movements have been decidedly reduced and overall stamina increased. Weapon sway now depends much more significantly by player actions, movements, enemy suppression, health condition.
Suppression itself is quite more sturdy and explosions suppression has been introduced as well. Friendly nametags have been removed, 60 seconds instadeath reinstated, and created a (quite basic for now) aim punch.
Approaching an enemy position is now harder and requires more coordination, but is also more rewarding at the same time. We also thought about the average spawn distance from flags and how it is much tooefficient to simply give up and respawn to be back in action at the moment.
We modified rallies to be only a game mechanic to gather a squad distant from hot situations and strongly reduced his capability of being a permanent spawn point. Placing FOBs is much more important, as is placing them in good positions. Disabling range for FOBs has been changed to 100m, but three enemies are required.
Furthermore, radios are not shovable anymore and are now damageble only by C4, HE, and high-caliber AP. A new kit “Explosives expert” has been added as “FOB hunter.”