A.S.S. System

Can’t believe you guys expect low effort posts from me. Unforgivable.

Big shoutout to my focus group.

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overall fantastic idea, adds more strategy and roleplay for those who want it while keeping the classic CM experience intact. I just wish charlie was around to see it…

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Thinly veiled Charlie deletion thread.
Also, that’s too forced, I skim over the introduction when I start the game or get a ghost role, I’m not doing more than that just to play ez game.

This seems more like CiC strategy you can implement, not force. Hell, it’s already in place, Charlie and Delta usually serve as assault, and Alpha is usually sent off in another direction for a pincer, eventually they all lead to one area and do this essentially. Bravo is already security.

If anything, this is a poorly thinly veiled Charlie deletion thread. Splitting Charlie into 3 other squads. That’s 3 more specs, 3 more SG’s, 3 more squads in 3 more radios, most importantly that’s 3 more squads people have to fill up, what are you gonna do low pop, give out 6 specialists?

I agree with Johannes here.

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I like the name.
Post must be at least 20 characters.

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image
HEEELP

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Thwomper
You want to divide Charlie into 3 fireteam sized squads for support role that works in tandem to an “unknown variable”. That means nothing, that means that if staff isn’t actively stepping into the game to roleplay with them, they won’t do anything aside from maybe listen to the CO.

That’s another thing, I asked what the CO’s role was in all of this and you told me to read it, that screenshot was my response. I read the whole thing, and I got the same result as skimming.

CO is unmentioned anywhere, assault platoon is just staff enabled pvp no rp (one step lower than what we have, miraculous, how that happened), support is just Charlie split into three fireteams, with you saying you left Charlie when it got weird, and then it being dependent on staff to be useful for anything ( if that’s what unknown variable, otherwise it’s just…Charlie, who already has the rep for listening to orders most). And Security, that’s just Bravo but force reduced to under or equal to 20%.

Also, is the screenshot some sort of gotcha because you said in there, yourself, that you were going to only respond to forum posts. Then you called me a bitch and eventually… that screenshot.

I still think that this is just a CO strategy thing, and that CO’s can just pick a squad out (usually Charlie) and decide if they want to make it the support squad… which is already the norm. All you’re doing is streamlining one strategy into THE strategy.

What’s gonna happen when a CO wants a megaFOB in a situation they want a megaFOB? Your 50% marine force gets the chance to tell him to bite dust and be allowed by staff?
And before you say “marines already do that”, that’s a moderation and rp standard issue, staff is okay with pfc’s (the bulk) being lower RP.

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Its leagues better than the previous idea, but it does boil down to the thread title minus the commas. Can’t say I approve of removing charlie and you cant really balance the added SGs and specs for mini squads. Having so many extra SLs would be similarly weird.
But the idea of having a small squad or two is pretty cool.

Wouldn’t it be easier to add 1-2 mini squads to regular gameplay as a role to roll for instead of squad pref? I think that’s the least invasive way of implementing it which shouldn’t require many balance tweaks.
i.e “spec ops pfc/medic/engi/SL” and enforce the same RP standards on these squads as SLs have? While they would not get specs and SGs, if they’d turn out completely useless, they could get compensated with slightly increased stats like +25% hp or whatever, being the “spec ops” guys. Hopefully with the RP standard enforced it wouldn’t turn into a PFC++ powergame role if that path’s taken.

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I like it. I feel that what several other people are neglecting here is that Charlie was usually the squad you asked to do something when you needed two orders followed sequentially, instead of “kill shit, build shit.” While I am in the minority of players who really enjoys the milsim ascpect of CM: this is exactly what I would hope for. Someone to send in a blob and forget about, an anchor to hold the LZ down, and then someone you can count on executing a flank, FOB, or other complex strategy (a lot of the struggle of CIC is skimming known names/people actually talking over radio instead of sitting silently without a helmet to see who’s worth talking to and trying to lead).

What I feel like this could benefit more than anything is really establishing those squad roles: Giving Security proportionally more commtechs and the lack of smartgunners in Support is a great approach though I almost feel like dual smartgunners in assault at the cost of their specialist would be a better call for the blob tactics they call for. Similarly, a dedicated, guarenteed Security Mortar Crew.

I’d also be careful with colors: recognizing that Support will be in more technical roles, assigning them the same colors as medical and intel could be tricky. A sky-blue and saturated pink might be better calls, if not the previously-used charlie purple.

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Echo exists for when command wants to try and do this exact thing.

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Ok, how about we half-Echofy CM? Also, removing Charlie? Now that’s personal!

Honestly, this is better than the previous proposal.

But this leaves a big problem in calling it “Support”. Because command would realistically give those squads support jobs. Like holding Hydro or clearing the backline. But since the author is trying to grandfather in his Echo playstyle, which of of course involves ignoring command outright and doing whatever(flanking the hive alone on the worst possible direction at the worst possible moment with no coordination with anyone). So I’d probably rename those squads as “Recon”. And limit them to two at most, until very high pop.

Then since now you’ve got your personal fiefdom, do you need to touch other squads much? Bravo being opt-in too(and word of God-ing it to do comms in addition to the FOB) would kill the squad. Ideally it needs to be large enough too, to cover for all the people going unga and field a backline contesting fireteam too.

And there’s absolutely no need to kill Charlie. The bare minimum size of a proper squad in CM is 1 SL + 1 Spec + 1 SG + 2 medics + 2 engineers = 7 people in the fire\support section. Then we add at least 2 fireteams to have the assault section be at least the same size as the support one. Thus it’s 15 people. Then you can add 1 more 4 man fireteam for a total of of 19. And then maybe 1 engineer 1 medic, for 21.

So IMHO the best would be a system that fills Oscar(Echo) on the opt-in basis. Then if fills Alpha, Bravo and Delta to 15. Then depending on the available manpower it wakes up either Kilo or Charlie. Then after Charlie is there, feel free to only wake up small squads. On lowpop don’t even wake up Delta. Then allow the latejoins to fill each big squad to 21, but no more.

In terms of Spec\SG economy - just keep the same 4/4 and let the the players decide where they wanna roll.

I want to avoid a variation of the actual number of squads if at all possible, but it wouldn’t be too hard. Just working with the actual number of opts in, divide by the cap limit of the squad, round down, and generate x number of support squads to a max of three wouldn’t be super crazy mathematically, but it would be sort of a mapping annoyance to have unused space at times. The actual proportion references are very loosely based on extremely skewed statistics I’ve gathered, so like I said, it’ll be the focus of testing.

Also
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Button clicks go crazy.

Additionally!!! (Thanks slowmode!)

The spec/SG distribution (idk if y’all can even see it) is all four SGs go to the assault teams, and 2 specs go there. The other three specs are distributed to the support squads, so they have some niche to built around. Either way, that can easily be flopped around, but I thought it might be neat.

I think it’s a good idea to have way less snowflake squad slots than there are opt-ins. It should be a privilege so the people would really try and not everyone would be able to roll it every round and maybe you can even do more OOC enforcement for following the SL in those. And you can also limit it to not let PVTs in.

The snowflake slots should also be limited by the population on the normal squads. With something like 2 to 1 ratio. Because on mid pop you’re going to end up with barely filled Bravo, half-filled Alpha\Delta and 3 full snowflake squads who would do the Echo thing. And of course that’s how you get micromanagy CO-s(like me) on your ass.

While if it’s just 1 squad most of the time and 2 squads at high pop, command would just let you live and die as you see fit.

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I like this, needs some tweaking, but I could see this working in the future.
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a BRAVO squad that doesn’t have half the members disappear into the ether/frontline after the first cadelines are down. I do notice said squad (which is my main squad), has a lack of SG/Spec, which I’m kinda okay with. SG a little less so, as they can be incredibly useful helping them, but still only 2 engineers? Might I suggest adding an additional 1-3 slots for that? (1-2 for lowpop, 2-3 for highpop). Though, an additional thought is that the designated Security Squad may have the lowest amount of peeps in it, 'cause not a lot of people like that type of gameplay for some reason, which is why we see FOB always lightly defended most rounds.
No need for Oscar/Kilo/Tango as the names for the support squads, just have 'em be Charlie/Echo/Foxtrot, that way we don’t have to change much for that AFAIK?

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This looks like a lot of fun and I would be all for this.

People can sit down and criticize and speculate and pretend like they know exactly how this is gonna play out all day but the fact of the matter is nobody will know how it goes until it gets tested for a few rounds. People are way too quick to write huge novels on how they think it’s gonna go or why it’s a bad idea but at this point my eyes just glaze over at the umpteenth 8 paragraph long reply.

It’s probably better to test the proposal wholesale and tweak as you go rather than sit and speculate all day

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i skimmed it, it looks kinda neat i suppose

+1

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yeah this seems really good it makes it easier for command staff to organise flanks and stuff

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I mean, with the clear “These ones assault and these ones secure and these ones operator”, then I could see some room for just outright giving Bravo squaddies a single pip in engineering or construction. I think that if we give similar orders to each squad every round, then mechanical enforcement would only benefit them.

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Im all for the A.S.S. Honestly, with A.S.S. ingame we would have such a large deeper understanding to the way marines work, achieving total A.S.S. would be a goal that CIC can work together instead of having SO’s trying to organize their own understanding of A.S.S. on their own.

I especially like the A.S.S. idea since it means that we will hopefully get dedicated squads for certain objectives, instead of having half the time either alpha or charlie being on comms, or having some ‘funny’ XO subvert A.S.S. completely and put a Assault Squad on the FOB, completely mitigating the utilzation and effectiveness of A.S.S.

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