today i played as fia on a vanilla server. just after the game start, i accidentally ran over a fia bot and got renegade rank. all fia bots started to treat me as hostile and shot me.

after respawning i tried to get rank back by killing americans/soviets, but apparently you are not allowed to wear fia clothing while doing that. the game gave me further negative rank, i only realized this after my rank basically went to 0.

running supplies as renegade fia is near impossible. all the bases and the supply depots are stacked with fia bots at the beginning of the game. also, once a fia base is under attack and the bots dead, it will usually fall to americans/soviets quickly and you won't be able to drop off supplies.

delivering supplies to supply caches apparently also does not give rank back, i tried it and there was no popup. also the cache could only hold one fifth of a supply truck.

i was also unable to capture enemy bases, since none of them were connected to "my" bases.

this left only

1. killing soviets/americans while being naked (which essentially means supply depot camping with a makarov)

2. playing taxi driver for fia players who spawn in the middle of nothing (gives very little rank)

3. destroying american/soviet vehicles (but standard loadout doesn't have weapons to do that)

i tried that for a few hours and then basically gave up on the match after getting killed by fia bot respawns for the 10th time. it felt a lot like getting server banned, for no apparent reason.

i think americans/soviets can't fall as easily into renegade (they can get a good rank cushion pretty easily at the beginning), and if they fall into renegade, they can just kill fia bots or run supplies to an unguarded hinterland base of their faction. fia can do none of that.

suggested changes:

• give fia fresh spawns a little bit of starting rank so that one teamkill at the beginning doesn't pull the player down to renegade,

• allow renegade fia to kill soviets/americans while wearing fia uniform,

• enable rank gain by delivering supplies to caches and increase the amount of supplies that a cache can hold,

• give fia basic spawns some tool or weapon that they can use to destroy a vehicle that they appropriated, like for example an oily rag + cigarette lighter,

• allow renegade rank players to get equipment from enemy bases and hidden supply caches. it makes sense that equipment at friendly bases is limited by rank, but if you're stealing, the rank system should not apply. sneaking into an unguarded enemy base feels incredibly unrewarding.