In Day of Infamy the mode is a real setting, not baked into the map. You pick it on the deploy page and it decides two things at once: whether you are playing against other people or against AI, and what the objective is. Here is the full list, split into PvP and co-op.
PvP (you versus other players)
- Frontline: Tug of war over a line of objectives in the middle of the map. Both teams push, and taking the whole chain into enemy ground wins. The standard team versus team mode and the best first pick.
- Liberation: High stakes with limited lives. Capture radios for map intel and free captured teammates. Slower and more tactical, it rewards patience over rushing.
- Stronghold: Attack and defend. One team assaults a set of objectives while the other holds them, round based. Great when you want clear attacker and defender roles.
- Entrenchment: An asymmetric push. Attackers grind forward through dug-in defenders who give ground position by position. Chaotic and cinematic.
- Firefight: Round based. Capture all the objectives or eliminate the enemy team to win the round, and holding ground brings your reinforcements back. The most one-more-round of the PvP modes.
Co-op (you and friends versus AI)
- Raid: Push in and destroy the enemy supply caches against bots. A good co-op opener with a clear goal.
- Patrol: Move through a string of checkpoints, holding off AI ambushes along the route. More about map control than a single objective.
- Offensive: Assault and capture a chain of objectives against AI defenders, advancing as you clear each one. The co-op counterpart to an attack mode.
Choosing and switching modes
- Pick the mode when you deploy. It sets whether the server is PvP or co-op and the starting map.
- To switch live, change the map over the web console or rcon and pass the mode as the second word after the map name (for example, load foy with firefight). The mode follows what you load.