Personally i’m okay with Lowpop, especially when i’m playing as XO but there do need to be some changes as there is barely anyone or people who just don’t want to step up and fill the roles that are severely need for the server to still function properly for marine side.
I feel like to keep things running SOMEWHAT smoothly for lowpop rounds is to revert some changes so that marines and mostly command don’t have to stress about not enough medics or engineers in the round.
That being
bring back the communications crate so marines don’t have to worry about defending static comms so much
maybe revert changes to auto doc so that it can do surgeries like before (i know research got another change and can do that with upgrades but barely anyone plays research, marines don’t bother bringing up corpses, or the round ends before anything can happen with research)
one thing i can think of that will also be useful to have in lowpop rounds is a tablet for REQ that can be used by command.
other than that these changes are meant to make things smoother for shipside. I do understand that most of these issues are negligent and could just be chalked up to marines having no variety when it comes to lowpop rounds. But it is a hassle and a pain in the ass for people who take CIC roles or get put in that position with no one else being able to help and are alone, with everyone in Dchat or OOC saying that the round failed because (((they))) fucked up. And this goes on from like 11pm to 6am (CST).
Things that I feel are needed to help even out the Lowpop experience
Smaller maps: Specifically a map that is like LV-624 or Solaris, but less space
Guaranteed Xeno and Marine defences: More important for Marines, but both sides need more pre-set defensives.
Marines need some kind of timed FOB defence (sentry guns with a inbuilt timer?) and a faster way to make some FOB barricades, I recall seeing a idea of adding special FOB cades for lowpop that can be deployed like a porta-cade but will build itself into a regular cade over the course of 20 seconds (that can only be deployed in the FOB area)
Xenos are not as desperate for defences since they have 20 mins, but even just a few more walls around expected Marine ingress routes can help.
More compact squads? Having 2 to 5 Marines in 4 squads is useless, I’d rather have 10 Marines in two Squads.
The only issue with this, it we’d get half the SLs, half the SGs, half the Specs
Plus, any commander worth their salt does this already, more or less.
Typical squad movements tend to get disregarded, and the force is split into Assault squad (often two squads in a murderball), FOB squad, and Support squad (Comms/Power/QRF for the assault squad)
I’ve seen a couple of XOs manually merge an echo squad out of two or three squads, and Im of the opinion that this actually does more harm than good
Smaller squads, while usually less effective at combat, end up being a far more agile and maneuverable force by CIC, due to their compartmentalization
Although yeah, I do agree, a squad of 2 Marines is useless
The squad made up of 1 Rifleman and 1 Corpsman is not going to be doing much despite being given orders by the single SO to go hold a objective by themselves, especially when they don’t even get a Smartgunner or Specialist since there are not enough people to unlock the 4th slots (or 3rd slots if we’re going to lowpop hell).
In either case I support any changes to make Lowpop rounds not last 45 minutes (technically 60 minutes due to mandatory hijack wasting our time)
