Current policy is that the Marines are unaware of the presence of Xenomorphs on the colony, although the Marines do know about the existence of Xenomorphs. On the other hand, the Xenomorphs are aware of the imminent arrival of humans in orbit.
My policy suggestion is to alter this rule and to give the Commander, this being the CO and XO, the choice to decide if they are aware of the presence of Xenomorphs on the operations zone or not and to use that information as they see fit. With the expectation that by default everyone else onboard the Almayer is unaware of there being Xenomorphs on the colony unless told by the CO/XO.
Ultimately this would be more a roleplay change that would grant CIC more options in how they approach their briefing and the initial mood of the round.
Some of the ARES initial announcements should be changed as they are all made for the scenario that marines are unaware of the xenos if we are to make such change.
Sounds good, perhaps something on the lines of âA distress signal was sounded on #### USS Almayer was dispatched to assist. Information was uploaded to the acting commander of USS Almayer.â
So if XO woke up first the CO wouldnât know about the threat and vice versa. SOâs should automatically not know about the threat
I donât see what this will accomplish, personally. It might even be used as a sort of gamey plans now that you âknowâ or things like that.
But I mean, letâs face it. Everyone is aware and everyone plans for xenos and equips themselves for xenos and says time to go kill xenos on the DS sometimes or in briefing. Just now gives you the legal right to do all of these.
For what itâs worth I donât notice people stating outright we are about to fight xenos, outside of the occasional quip of "wouldnât it be really inconvenient if we ran into xenos on this op
My thought process here is to give CIC more leeway in crafting how they want to approach the operation, even if its just from a thematic/fluff perspective.
I personally have seen from marines to SOs say weâre fighting xenos before the Req lines were empty. Instead of giving all these people the new rule to just instantly know, instead the guidelines should be enforced appropriately.
Because, again, why wouldnât they want to know the threat of the planet? Who would not wish to view or find out and go in blind? Realistically speaking. Then weâd devolve into a quite literal TDM with no RO involved.
Both the CO and XO should be made aware because most of the time if a CO is awake they let the XO take the major role in the groundside op and they just assist.
This would not change for me as I usually have one squad secure medical, comms, then one on fob and the last one act like recon. And I believe most XOs do the same. Itâs not the fact we are plan for Xenos itâs we are preparing for the worst out come.
Itâs COs more so than XOs, but any ânon-meta planâ that involves going into and through caves, or just a plan that makes a bee-line towards a possible hive starting location (meta knowledge) is unrealistic, stupid and plain rulebreak.
If weâre talking about Command being unaware of the threat then we are to assume itâs either a simple malfunction from the colony, some kind of disaster (natural or otherwise) struck the colony, or a CLF-like insurgency. Nobody should really be âexpectingâ Xenos. And guess what: in EVERY case, Command should be sending most of its forces towards securing the local administration hub first and foremost. Yknow - try and find out what happened, find surviving colony leadership.
But no, letâs send two squads into a cave network used for mining. Thatâs realistic, right?
Securing the local administration building is pure soul, and good RP. But an argument could be made that it gets boring after round #500 of doing the same thing.
At a point (imo) realism should make way for actually unique gameplay.
Only three people know where Chanceâs Claimâs command centre is and the only people who will ever visit it during any average round are Forecon, and only because they spawn there.
In the 1 time every 2 months I play XO I do try to set orders that make sense in terms of us going to a colony that, with a 95% chance, is just suffering a destroyed comms relay.
But I can appreciate, as @TheGamer01 states, that you can only do the same thing so many times before you it gets stale.
I think the only map where marines should know for sure itâs xenos is chanceâs claim, mainly because itâs really the only thing that makes sense, CLF? nah too much marine and corpos, so it canât be local colonists, UPP? Truce says they wonât kill each other, Xenos? about the only thing that could wipe out a group of highly trained marines with good equipment.
I mean basically this. Almost every XO/CO meta games the knowledge weâre 100% of the time going against xenos and very few people actually roleplay briefing/orders/predrop like theyâre actually in the dark. There is a big reason for this of course, itâs very limiting in the type of orders you realistically would give out and kind of eliminates potential fun strategies.
Every single time I finally manage to roll XO I always roleplay oblivious to the even slight possibility that xenos might be down there and always try and bring up the CLF or a technical issue of some sort. My orders reflect a cautious approach to a colony we have little info on and scouting for intel is the main game plan. RPâly weâre in the dark and just sending all combat marines forward to some meta choke point makes no sense.
However I guarantee that the vast majority of players have more fun playing under one of our veteran COs doing their crazy fun rappel behind enemy lines strat, or unga death ball into 50~ minute win for the marines. Staff donât seem to care whatsoever when command blatantly meta game orders and say out loud things like âwe drop at 20 minutes ROUND TIME we gonna go hydro and kill xenosâ in the first announcement they make.
I agree that the policy should be edited to reflect the current low rp state of affairs and just make it so everyone knows weâre running into xenos. Like how cant the Almayer detect things or have some clue about the enemy anyways, itâs fine to do this. But the current situation we have is jokes in my opinion, everyone meta games orders and no one ever cares. We should more or less stop beating around the bush.
Some maps like Chances Claim flat out tells the marines itâs xenoâs
Iâm a firm believer that non-xeno rounds like HvH and zombies should be a bit more hidden about what it is so people donât meta it. Like all admins need to give in OOC is a âevent this roundâ and a âobserve on round start for event rolesâ or a âdrop will be delayedâ.
When zombies is announced, everyone runs light armor. When itâs HvH, everyone runs heavy armor.
Giving more mystery to what we are actually fighting would make rounds way more entertaining. Hearing âevent this roundâ in OOC could inspire straight fear. It could be anything from RMC survs to hot dropping into the CLF again.
And also the people who would salt over âwaaah waaah I wasnât able to meta knowledge the admin eventâ would salt over it no matter what.
Marines always âknowâ itâs xenoâs every round and are NEVER deprived of the knowledge of what theyâre going to be fighting. The best way to encourage IC knowledge deprivation is via OOC knowledge deprivation since all the OOC info we are given rn is very unnecessary imo
One thing thats also miffed me a bit with unlogical orders. Who in their right mind would deconstruct parts of their ship and transport that metal down to a FOB. And who is crazy enough to order people to do it.
I tried to go and find the staff report from old forums but that forum is pretty much deleted, witch is making me sad because then you could really see what happen when a staff make a zombie event without saying it was a zombie event because of meta of flamers/c4, makes beeing zombie beeing shitty boring. Long story short the malding of not knowing and beeing useless with wrong layout was ugh⌠Extreme, i dont think it ended well for the person who did the event eighter. For suprising many a round is not one out of millions. Cm is not fun, and most are tryhards apperantly.
annoying to deal with over a long period of time.