BF2:Colors and Minimap

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The text over players' heads in the main game view is colored, as are the minimap icons. Your squadmates are green. Everyone else on your team is blue. Enemies are red. Unlike Battlefield 1942, where red is the Axis team and blue is the Allied team, in Battlefield 2, blue is always your team. Be careful with colors: see the Friendly Fire bug.
In general, the colors of other elements in the game, such as the ticket counters, flag capture progress bars, etc. are blue (your team) or red (enemy team) in similar ways.
On the minimap, colored lines are orders from your squad leader telling you to go somewhere. Just follow the line. At the end point you'll see a small amount of colored smoke coming up. That's the point you're supposed to get to, or at least the general area. The line color, and minimap icon at its end, tell you what you're to do:
- Yellow lines with an arrow icon: "move here"
- Purple lines with a shield icon: "defend here"
- Orange lines with a sword icon: "attack here"
- Purple lines with a wrench icon: "repair here"
- Orange lines with a sledge icon: "destroy here"
- Orange lines with a mine icon: "mine here"

You can see the icons and their colors in the lower portion of the Squad leader menu, visible in this screenshot.

Yellow icons on the minimap and in the ingame view indicate objectives that need repair. For example: on the minimap, the artillery shows as a grey icon if it's okay, or as an yellow icon if it's destroyed. In the same vein, bridges will show up as yellow bridges both on the minimap and on the main screen.
Be aware that there is a programming glitch in Battlefield 2 known as the "Red Tag Glitch" - Certain friendly forces will occasionally have their name in RED above their head, instead of the proper BLUE color which denotes teammates instead of enemies. Don't be surprised if you shoot someone with a red tag over their head only to have the game say that you killed a teammate. Pay special attention to the physical appearance of the target in question - if he has MEC clothing on (and you are on the MEC side), he is still on your team even if his name shows up in RED. This is especially hard to do with snipers as they all look the same.

Moving, round dots with points on them are players; the points indicate the directions they're facing. Your own dot on the minimap gets a white angle coming out of it which represents your FOV (field of view).
If a player dot on the radar has a red semi circle around them this means that the player is running low on ammo if you are a support class or health if you are a medic.
Grey/white dots are things like vehicles or gun emplacements.
Manned vehicles/aircraft show up as colored icons, so for example a red 4-wheeled icon is an enemy land vehicle.
If you see a radar-like rotating sweep on the minimap, that's a friendly UAV your commander has sent up to scan for enemies. Enemies it sees show up on the minimap as red dots. (You don't normally see enemies on the minimap unless you can personally see them, a teammate calls them out, or your commander has a UAV scanning.)
If you see a red artillery icon, that is FRIENDLY artillery your commander is calling in to an area. The area is either being shelled or about to be shelled. Stay out of the area until the artillery barrage is complete or you may be killed.