I'm a huge fan of Conflict and I was interested to see the "free build" mechanic, which sounds like an interesting idea. So I installed Experimental 0.9.7.85 to check it out. I realise the concept may change, but I can only judge on what I see, and what I see concerns me greatly.
Allowing free build in this way (especially without a rank requirement) is going to lead to chaos, especially from trolls in the game (and there are plenty of them who just love to ruin the game for everyone else). So, playing the part of a troll, I was able to: delete key services (e.g. armoury, vehicle depot, etc), box a player by surrounding them with sandbags in real-time as they walked, block off building doors and entrances, completely block the vehicle spawn service, build huge structures across roads and all the while eating up valuable supplies that are already painful enough to have to truck in.
If BI insist on adding this feature, can I suggest that it is only available to higher ranks, key services should be exempt from free build and that access points to buildings and services cannot be interfered with.
Additionally, allowing the standard key services (e.g. armoury, vehicle depot, etc) to be built by "anyone, anywhere" will often mean spending much time trying to find where these service have been put, wasting time and causing more player confusion. Especially if those Main Base services are built by whatever player who is first into the server. Inexperienced players will do dumb stuff, like place a vehicle depot so its facing right into a wall or trees, etc. Allowing players to create and delete these key services on a whim, is just crazy. Why bother walking all the way over to where the armoury is, I can just delete it and rebuild it right in front of me.
Honestly, sticking with this game has been challenging enough, making it even more frustrating and unpredictable won't be good for those players who have been loyal to the game so far with all its current faults and limitations.
There are so many simple ideas that would improve the current game substantially. Playing as an American I can't even put a LAW in backpack, while the Soviets can carry 4 RPGs at a time. How hard would it be to supply us with illumination flares so we can fight effectively at night (and how cool would that be!?).
Its so frustrating to see development time being prioritized on "high concept" functionality, that just doesn't really improve the player experience, and I say that as a fan of BI from the original early days of Operation Flashpoint. This "free build" function, as it is in the Experimental build, really needs some serious rethinking.
To me Conflict game mode is all about immersion - its not run by a moderating "game master" who can help smooth out the player experience. Allowing random players to run amok with this ability will not work out well.