Endgame Reworks

General Discussion
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Defensive buffs of some sort need to stay in place unless new or old mechanics are introduced to give both sides breathing room, or else you create a meta where its rush or be rushed and the round ends in 20 mins on touchdown.

Marine req has NOT been buffed overtime; id wager with nerfs to free stuff you get, buying more items making it so you have to pay more per purchase of the same item, and metal + plasteel itself being less worth it overall economically (as its much weaker now than it was ages ago, especially since you need to upgrade metal cades to make them worth anything which means spending more metal that you do not have) means that the only time you see a decent amount of cade lines that are worth defending is in the FOB.

The reason why the game is not offensive is because of legitimate fearRP by both sides; marines being killed and not recovered, or dragged off by a caste and then put in hive with no chance of escape aka perma dead, while xenos have 1 life essentially most rounds unless the hive focuses on caps and then you MIGHT, MIGHT get ONE respawn since there’s 20 other people queing for xeno.

This fearRP manifests in holding FOB where you have lots of supplies + cades to defib safely in + Mortar and CAS support to wipe xeno structures, and xenos cave hugging where they have built in impenetrable walls that OB cannot wipe such as LV tunnels, no Mortar or CAS to worry about, and hive is nearby so capping is easy.

Thats why I stated both marine req needs a buff + xeno larvae passive and active gain needs to go up, so that both sides take more risks, otherwise if both sides are equally matched the most optimal strategy is the most passive and pussy strategy of waiting for the other side to push you.

TL;DR the current meta is WW-1 trench warefare; whoever pushes your trench first loses unless they push in fast, hard, and win in 5 minutes.

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Isn’t current metal cade roughly the same as old statwise? You don’t need to upgrade them to be useful. And even if so, it still ends up a buff to cades given the upgraded cade durability to brute and req funds/ability to purchase metal higher than in the past.
CM used to have a top of 2 metal cade lines with engineers melting stuff they find on the map, we used to melt reinforced tables and doors on prison to get a third cadeline on tcomms. Nowadays you get 2-3 as a standard on way bigger locations and even large front bases without any metal gathering being done.

It’s become harder to perma as a marine, the only legit change was reducing larvae per cap (mistake?). The fearRP is a result of defensive play buffs, not any large changes to respawns. Caves were always immune to mortar etc.

I’d rather the round end than it to be essentially over but extended for mechanical reasons where everyone’s just observing, bored. Comeback mechanics over defensive buffs. Instead of sentry guns defending the LZ, marines getting a tank to turn the tide would be better. Though im not sure how would a check for this work besides admin decision.

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So this stagnated a bit, just getting back on track but are devs open to removing the nuke, or changing the meta so that endgames for both sides don’t revolve around slopsiege?

1 Like
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FearRP:

  • It’s ‘more common’ nowadays despite marines being less likely to perma.
  • Like we used to have: husking, more gibbing, more decaps (sometimes even with helmet), more delimbs, more other medical issues requiring shipside return (which in turn allowed xenos to capitalize on delimbs, long term medical issues people develop & hugging better), xenos able to drag you off fast and even after death, combat hugging, combat nesting, better screech, no immature queen, better crusher (watch the crusher video - tell me the last time you’ve seen a crusher delimb lol) etc. The removal of all this slowly crept up to marines requiring shipside medical less and less, xenos having less power to remove marines from a frontline (increased marine staying power), and less likely perma occurrence…and yet. FearRP has existed after every single change. It’s not going away.
  • FearRP isn’t going to be magically solved by hugboxing marines even harder on their ability to avoid perma/needing to head shipside for medical. Personally I think it is tied to current states of the game that are difficult to change without requiring a cascade of frankly more changes (E.G Rifles buff = Xenos Buff/Marine health type nerfs to counterbalance). Certain T2 or T3 xenos you can only flee from when alone, armed with a nerf gun with nerf ammo (non-AP), and the xeno is half-decent.
  • Solutions: Buff CAS/OB? Improve/create new communication/inter-squad community building somehow in a natural way? Take that aforementioned cascading plunge? I have no idea because…See random stuff on “Cades”.

Random Stuff

  • Cades: Trappers are a hard counter to cades, frankly. It can get very difficult…if xenos bother with 1-2 trappers and Req/engineers aren’t on their game. Marines are also punished for FOB cade hugging on most maps as the TCOMMs spots are difficult to hold or outright maliciously difficult in placement, which further encourages force conservation. The thought here being classic as ever: Failed attack > fallback to FOB > beat back xeno attempts on TCOMMS > continue until you fail and evac or bleed hive to combat ineffectiveness and are able to push again. In current meta, losing your last TCOMMS is a direct path to a Evac if you can’t retake it pre-2 hour mark. But this gets us into the hilarity of the hives sometimes cleaning house at the 1 hour mark, ending up with like 10-20 xenos… and then being unable to take the FOB and bleeding themselves long before the 2 hour mark.
  • Foxtrot: Increase the amount of cost in points…but also the squad size to be more representative of the round. A round with like 150+ players has like what? A 8 man Foxtrot? 5? Now imagine how many are sitting in dedchat by the time a larger (in points and personnel) and more desirable Foxtrot would become viable.
  • Perma: Bring back husking chance once you hit like… 600, 700 or 750 burn. If that proves an issue, nerf/re-remove it. At the same time: See Foxtrot & larva changes to give more opportunity for players to jump back in somehow.
  • Caps: Incentivize xenos to do so without punishing them if they don’t. Honestly kind of lost on how to do this one.
  • Larva: Larva per cap should have a small chance of 1-3 imo. Of course, 3 should be ultra-ultra-rare. 100% a xeno buff of course, but it does bring back in players into the game and rewards capping in scale.

Endgame

  • Shipside More options in general is good. We’ve increasingly railroaded players into “Hold Lifeboats + SE Pumps”. 1. Free up Evac Pods to not require fuel. 2. Make Lifeboats/Evac Pods mutually exclusive with Self Destruct. 3. Slight revision to CiC to make it either easier to defend in general like before or easier for marines to operate in during Code Red or something. It intentionally was nerfed yet is the one place on the ship that, by design, the USCM would have made a viable hold if necessary akin to lifeboats at least. Instead the place is a deathtrap.

  • Planetside: Thought crafting Here we go:

    1. Like you could give Queens the option to just…chill planetside if they have less than 8 or 10 xenos and don’t want to head up (maybe make this votable by the Hive).
    1. AA Boiler option against Almayer. Marines then have the choice of beginning the process to leave orbit or full committing and abandoning ship to fight groundside at the cost of the Almayer. Give the marines 5 or 10 minutes to make that decision or kill the AA Boiler. No Reply to the ARES inquiry via Command Console results in ARES auto de-orbiting and the game auto-ending (This speeds up the round to conclusion in the event no command staff are present/able to make the decision). If Command instead chooses the hail mary route and do deploy: you still set up the game for a relatively speedier conclusion. Afterall, marines would be abandoning ship in a hail mary to end the hive groungside…likely in a situation where both TCOMMS are still lost. Very thematic. If the Marines choose that ‘Deploy’ option (which causes the Almayer’s destruction instead of a round end), then they’d have 5-10 minutes to deploy before the Almayer hits critical de-orbit and crashes (it is destroyed) and concurrent to this* they must also take at least 1 TCOMMS back before “More Xenos planetside determine the location of the Marine force”. To further ensure a speedy end: Xenos would get the same kind of feature the planetside gets post-hijack where Forsaken start spawning (only the Forsaken would be part of the actual hive). Like the Nuke Timer, this Xeno Reinforcement Timer can only be delayed by the marines retaking the TCOMMS. Not Reset. If the Xenos retake the 2 TCOMMS, the timer starts back up again where it left off. Total Time Estimate if Auto De-Orbit: 5 or 10 Minutes. Total Time Estimate if Hail Mary: at ~20 minutes the hive starts getting T2 and T3 spawns that random dead players can jump in to finish the game off, assuming the hive didn’t lose any TCOMMS at all post-marine hail mary and Almayer destruction. Comparison to endgames: this is comparable to minimum 20-30 minutes of moving to FOB+hijack in normal rounds, 20-40 minutes you already get with King shenanigans planetside & then eventual Hijack, and the 10-60 minutes you occasionally see with nuke too, after factoring in xenos retaking TCOMMS or nuke being turned off/transported/delays to evac everyone safely pre-detonation.
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