Conquest is a gamemode first introduced in Battlefield 1942 and has been featured in every Battlefield game in the series to date with several variations. The mode focuses on capturing and defending Control Points scattered around the map.
Gameplay[]
Conquest is the "main" gamemode of the Battlefield series, revolving around large-scale territory battles over map control points and continual attrition of the enemy team. To win the round, one of the teams must reduce the enemy's reinforcement tickets to zero or have more tickets than the enemy by the end of the round.
Tickets[]
In Conquest, both teams start the match with a set number of Respawn/Reinforcement Tickets, usually just referred to as Tickets. This is essentially the team's available "reinforcements" during the battle, as the number of tickets a team has denotes the number of times a team's players can collectively respawn. If a team's tickets are reduced to zero or are lower than the enemy's by the end of the round timer, they lose the match.
In order to reduce the enemy's ticket count, players must either capture control points or kill enemies, which will cause ticket bleed or force a player to respawn, respectively.
Tickets are depleted when a team owns more control points than the opposing faction on the map through a mechanic called Ticket Bleed. When one team gains control of over half the control points on the map, the enemy team will begin losing tickets at a fixed rate based on how many bases they are behind the opposition. Essentially, the more control points a team owns, the faster the enemy will involuntarily lose tickets. This makes point capture the main objective of Conquest, as it is the fastest method to use up all of the enemy's tickets. The secondary objective is to kill enemy players to force ticket loss.
A ticket is not used up when a player is killed; instead, it is used up when the player actually respawns into the battle after a death. This makes killing enemies the secondary objective of players during Conquest as it will force the enemy to respawn and spend a ticket, but is a much slower method compared to actually capturing control points. A team with less killing potential than their opponents can still win a match simply by just focusing on capturing control points.
Since Battlefield 2, ticket depletion can also be directly countered by Reviving players. Tickets are essentially "refunded" by reviving players in a Critically wounded state before they respawn, as they don't use a ticket to enter the game again. If a revive is rejected, the ticket will not be refunded as the player has to spawn again. Revives are especially important near the end of close matches, sometimes being the only way to stave off ticket bleed long enough to capture enough control points to win.
Battlefield 1 features an alteration on the classic Conquest ruleset, where each team's tickets start at zero and count up to a goal limit (by default 1000) instead of ticking down.
Victory/Defeat Rating[]
Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam uniquely featured six degrees of Victory and Defeat based off a team's final number of tickets at the end of a match. Victory ratings are based on remaining friendly tickets, while defeat ratings are based on remaining enemy tickets. This has not appeared in subsequent games in the series.
Rating | Remaining Ticket Count |
---|---|
Total Victory | 50% or more friendly tickets |
Major Victory | 25-50% friendly tickets |
Minor Victory | 0-25% friendly tickets |
Minor Defeat | 0-25% enemy tickets |
Major Defeat | 25-50% enemy tickets |
Total Defeat | 50% or more enemy tickets |
Control Points[]
- Main article: Control point
Control Points, also called Flags, Firebases, or Bases, are the main objective objects of Conquest. They are set areas of the map that can be captured by players to act as spawn points for their team. Alongside contributing to the ticket bleed on the enemy, owned Control Points can also offer other advantages to the team, such as spawning vehicles, emplaced weapons, Battle Pickups, Resupply Cabinets, or just allowing easier access to the rest of the map.
To capture a point, players must stand within the point's capture area until it comes under their team's control. Capture zones are within range of the base's flagpole (or flare pile, in the case of Battlefield Hardline). The size of capture areas vary widely between maps, with some being large enough for vehicles to capture the objective while others may only have enough space to accommodate infantry. Many times, they can also deliberately be set out of range of cover, forcing players to risk going out into the open in order to capture it. Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline both display a base's capture area on player's minimaps once they are within range of the objective.
When the player is in the capture zone, a capture meter will show the progress of the capture; more recent games in the series will also display the point name to the player. The rate of capture can be increased by having more friendly players within the zone, but will decrease with enemy players in the zone. If the same amount of players from both teams are in the zone, capture progress will be completely stopped until one side has more players in the area, either by being joined by other players or killing enemies.
In Battlefield V, the position of a player is relation to each point's flagpole now has an influence on that flag's capture rate. A flag will be captured quicker by a player standing next to the flagpole than a player on the edge of the capture zone. Furthermore, if two opposing players are in the same capture zone with capture progress stalled, traction can be started again for one team if that team's player moves closer to the flagpole.
Point States[]
Control Points can be in one of four states:
Neutral
- Denoted by a white flag, the base is open for capture, either from not having been challenged since the round began, or because a flag once in possession was neutralized by the enemy. Players cannot spawn on neutral flags.
Conquered
- The flag is held by the player's team; teammates may spawn here, along with vehicles chosen for that point by the map designer. Opposing players can revert Conquered bases to Neutral, and then Capture them for their team.
Captured
- The flag is held by the opposing team, and can spawn infantry and vehicles for their use. Friendly players can revert a Captured control point back to Neutral, and then Conquer it for their team.
Uncapturable
- Sometimes called an Uncap or Deployment, the flag serves as a home base for the team and cannot be captured by the enemy. Uncaps generally don't have flagpoles unless they can be unlocked at some point. Games featuring Commander resources will generally have them located here or nearby. In the Assault Lines variation, the defending team's uncap will be "unlocked" for capture after all other points are taken by the attackers.
Variations[]
Conquest has had several variations throughout the series. Differences between variations vary from the amount of flags present on the map, as in Conquest Large, to significant changes in game rules, as with Chainlink and Assault Lines.
In Refractor-era games before Battlefield 2142, variants are not separated by gamemode and are instead listed just as Conquest in the server browser. The map's description on the loading or briefing screen instead list what version of Conquest is being played. Later games in the series have variants classified as separate gamemodes in the server browser.
Conquest Small[]
Conquest Head-On, simply called Conquest and Conquest Small in later games, is the standard variant of Conquest in the series. In Head-On, teams start on opposite ends of the map at their uncap while all other points on the map start out as neutral. Players must then fight for control of the neutral flags on the map. The opposing team will begin to bleed tickets once a team has captured more than half of the control points on the map.
Conquest Large[]
Introduced with Battlefield 3, Conquest Large, also called Conquest 64, is a version of Head-On that features more control points and additional vehicle types on the map, as well as a maximum player count of 64 instead of 24, compared to "regular" Conquest, which was subsequently termed Conquest Small. The gamemode was created to provide larger play areas and player counts for PC players at the release of Battlefield 3, but the gamemode became available to console players with Battlefield 4's release on eighth generation consoles. Gameplay rules are the same, with each team having an uncap and battling for control of the neutral points.
Conquest (Battlefield Play4Free/Battlefield 1)[]
- This item has a Codex entry: Guns of August
Massive all-out war: hold the majority of flags and eliminate enemy troops to win."
— Battlefield 1 In-game Description
Assault was the variant of Conquest featured in Battlefield Play4Free and the variant featured in Battlefield 1, where it is referred to simply as Conquest. Though similar to Conquest Head-On, Assault does not feature tickets like in other variations. Instead, the gametype features a score limit that must be reached in order to win the game. This is done by gaining points from capturing and defending a number of flags throughout the map. Unlike most or all of the other variants of Conquest, killing enemies does not count towards ticket gain.
Conquest Co-Op[]
Conquest Co-Op, generally just referred to as Co-Op, is a gametype featured in all Refractor-era Battlefield games. The gamemode does not alter game rules, but allows players to fight Bots instead of human players in a normal Conquest match and is generally restricted to the "small" version of maps in Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. This mode is automatically used for all Refractor-era game's Singleplayer mode. Despite the name of the mode, both teams have bots by default and players can choose to be on either team as usual in multiplayer matches.
Grind[]
Grind is a variation introduced to Battlefield V in Trial By Fire and was available to play from April 18 to 24 2019, September 5 to 12 2019 and November 21 to 28 2019. The mode functions in the same manner to a normal Conquest match with 64 players. A notable difference, however, is that each map has three flags in a linear layout. The mode was initially available on the maps Rotterdam, Devastation, Twisted Steel, and Narvik. Operation Underground became playable with the mode on the 21st November 2019.
Other Variants[]
Related Gamemodes[]
Trivia[]
- Conquest has been released with every Battlefield games to date except in Battlefield: Bad Company, as DICE wanted to promote the Gold Rush gametype. The default Conquest was later added in an update to the game.
- Conquest is the only game mode where a player can earn the Squad Member pin in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 due to the unique ability to defend and attack a flag in one round unlike other game modes.
- On the "Conquest Winner" dog tag in Battlefield 3, there are three engraved flags with "All", "Your" and "Base" written on each flag. This is a reference to the popular catchphrase "All your base are belong to us", from the 1989 arcade shooter "Zero Wing".