Destruction

Destruction is a feature in the Battlefield series debuting with Battlefield 1942, but appearing to a much greater extent in the games utilizing the Frostbite Engine. It allows the player to break down cover, fell trees, and destroy buildings. From Destruction 2.0 onwards, entire buildings will collapse after a certain amount of damage is executed.

Overview
Destruction is a feature which allows many types of items to be destroyed. Several selected items will be able to sustain damage to ensure stability and balance for every match.

Pre-Frostbite Engine
Before the Frostbite engine was developed for Battlefield: Bad Company, there was a far more limited amount of destruction found in the Refractor engine games such as Battlefield 2 or 1942. Certain obstacles and objects such as bridges can be destroyed by explosions.

Destruction 1.0
Destruction 1.0 debuted with Battlefield: Bad Company utilizing Frostbite 1.0. With it, segments of buildings could be obliterated, parts of vehicle body-work could be chipped away, trees could be felled, and the ground could be reshaped by explosions. The Destruction 1.0 mechanic introduced selective destruction, where only certain weapons or objects could cause damage - for instance, a Cobra 4WD couldn't run over a tree, whereas a Black Eagle battle tank could. This limited the amount of destruction that could be caused by certain players in certain scenarios.

By creating the Destruction 1.0 mechanic fully with the Frostbite Engine in mind, the DICE developers were able to combine the Destruction 1.0, the dynamic lighting and sound mechanics to create a "sandbox world", where the destruction caused by the player(s) would cause the lighting and sound to change with the removal of walls, fences and trees.

Destruction 2.0
An updated version of Destruction arrived with the release of Battlefield 1943. The mechanism gained the sole improvement of being capable of destroying entire buildings, though lacking any form of collapsing. With Battlefield: Bad Company 2, an even further enhanced version of Destruction was developed. When enough segments (walls and roof) are destroyed, the entire building will collapse, crushing everything inside. This allows Destruction to kill opponents and destroy enemy objectives. Once a building has been destroyed, players are able to navigate within the rubble by crouching or jumping through small paths formed by the debris.

"A building is a group of entities linked together. The entities are a bunch of wall and roof segments. Destroy a part, the wall disappears behind a smoke particle and is replaced by a hole. When a percentage of the walls are destroyed, the building plays its collapse animation. There's little else to it. For example, the building behind the first MCOM on Port Valdez. Break about 26 of those parts, and the thing goes down."

- Den Kirson

Additionally, Destruction 2.0 allowed pieces of the environment such as concrete barricades, walls, and wooden fences, to be destroyed in pieces, rather than entire entities.

Alongside all of the new aspects, Destruction 2.0 retains the same features from the original Destruction; one can chip away cover and parts of vehicles, fell trees, and reshape the terrain.

Destruction 3.0
Destruction 3.0 is a feature in Battlefield 3. Destruction 3.0 allows players to destroy objects with explosives like before, although, regular firearms such as the M4A1 can demolish on a much smaller scale. This new form of destruction is known as "microdestruction". Also, damage to buildings caused by explosions ripple out across the entirety of a wall, causing widespread damage and deformation, instead of affecting a limited 'segment' of a building. Falling pieces of rubble can potentially kill a player.

Unlike Destruction 2.0, Destruction 3.0 only allowed for a limited amount of destruction and only very few buildings could be totally demolished. This however, changed with the release of the Back to Karkand DLC. It allowed almost all structures to be destroyed in the map pack. The update for the DLC also allowed for more destruction in the base game.

Trivia

 * If a player has deployed C4 in a building while it is collapsing, it may explode while the walls cave-in, creating a shower of debris that can be an effective smokescreen.
 * Several lightweight objects, such as corrugated iron and boxes, will not be destroyed by explosives, and will merely be pushed away by the detonation.
 * If the player knifes a tree three times in Battlefield: Bad Company, it will collapse.
 * If a player is crushed in a collapsing building, the kill feed will state their death was caused by "Destruction 2.0" in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
 * The player responsible for causing the building to collapse will have points deducted for killing teammates and destroying their own team's objective. Destruction 2.0 is the only way to teamkill in a non-hardcore match.
 * The destruction of watchtowers works differently than with buildings. If a player is underneath, their death will be attributed to "Destruction 2.0," but if they are on top of the watchtower they will fall, and their death will be attributed to "suicide" (and award no points/kills to the person who caused the demolition).
 * Players will be killed even if they are on the roof of a collapsing building. In addition, players can be crushed even if no visible debris has fallen on them.
 * Laguna Presa is the only map in which a player cannot kill with Destruction 2.0. The map lacks any structures that can be collapsed using Destruction 2.0. Valparaiso has nearly the same attribute, however, there is a large building near the end of the Relay Station which can be destroyed.
 * Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam is devoid of the enhanced Destruction 2.0 as seen in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Instead, it uses the same kind of destruction as Battlefield 1943. 
 * In all Frostbite-powered games, furniture can be destroyed by pushing it into other objects.
 * In Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam, on Phu Bai Valley, it is possible to kill enemies with Destruction 2.0 by making the watch towers on the US Base collapse through destruction.
 * If someone gets killed by building collapsing on them in Battlefield 3, "Destruction 3.0" is not listed on the killfeed, but instead says "KILLED".
 * If a player kills an enemy with falling debris in Battlefield 3 the weapon used to cause the debris will be shown in the killfeed rather than "KILLED" or "Destruction 3.0".