It used to be that evac could only happen under a set guideline. (Old metaevac rules.)
Now there are rounds where there are 5 cade lines standing but marines evac because “my moral is low.”
You have some COs/XOs yelling to evac when there’s still 5+ lines standing which makes the inexperienced marines go sit in dropship and wait, meaning that a portion of the marines fire power is just giving the fob to whatever is attacking.
My proposal is that the “no evac until the last line is breached” rule comes back, especially with surge being removed as it is. People should be playing to play, not trying to evac when xenos do a fob siege because “they are here.”
Obs aren’t getting used
CAS isn’t getting runs because people are sitting in the dropship
XO’s/CO’s yelling to evac every announcement for ???.
People want to play the game but are being left in the dirt because people are sitting in the dropship.
There should be some requirement that you are supposed to play the game.
“Moral is low so I evacced the planet with 60 dudes;” is such a tired and worn out excuse for leaving the planet with 70 marines still left.
Need I remind you how effectively anything ‘meta’ was historically enforced against marines? Even during the metaevac meta circa 2020, I don’t remember anyone being punished for any of those 100+ people evac into that famed 14 sentry hangar lag hell.
Yes, xenos are a bit weak to the metaevacs currently, but it’d take metaevac over the 'rines going “we will wait the next hour for the nuke” any day.
my internal guide for evaccing is usually one of RP.
Where the death toll of the marines grows, or will foreseeably grow, to an unacceptable amount, I will evac.
Sometimes this leads to early evacs, sometimes too late, usually, it just means I evac when we’re between 75% to 90% casualty rate.
The push to evac, at least from a character perspective, is to protect your marine’s lives where it becomes clear the main objective cannot be got by throwing them away.
This. Winning or losing because the people around you simply refuse to play isn’t fun. We’re already at a point where it’s common for the xeno side to go afk for 30+ minutes till marines realize this is not in fact WO.
Everyone trying to early evac for no reason while the FOB is intact should be noted for griefing or LRP and if marines maintain a numerical 3:1+ advantage they should be forced to redeploy.
We aren’t trying to free Europe from tyranny, we’re on a search and rescue mission on a colony, population less than 80, usually less than 50 in fact.
The biggest reason for us to stay is quite literally the property value. It’s why the CL exists, kind of.
“Losing the game deliberately” is not something you can/should be noted for when it makes sense from an actual RP point of view. If I’m in command of a entire platoon of Marines, and 50% of them just died/got capped by a Xeno push in LV caves, then I’m sure as hell tempted to just withdraw and save the remaining 50% so long as we don’t have backup tools to alleviate those losses - i.e. competent CAS/Jtaccers, OB, SADAR, Intel points. I can’t be noted for employing sensible, humane strategy.
should also apply to xenos with how cringe some queens are in terms of cavehugging orders and banishing people that try to play. Gotta remember that people want to play the game and the game is neither ranked nor single player. At least the CO wont personally come down to BE you because you’re ruining his epic marine major by walking out of the cadeline.
“Sensible, humane strategy” equals both sides cade/cavehugging or even worse anti-fun ideas.
it’d be enough if people treated this as a game to have fun in, not a tryharding competition or a full realism milsim, some of you value winratios or logic so much it sucks the fun out of what is a goofy game where marines happily run at massive xenos to bathe in acid blood for a frag.
This isn’t a HRP server either, it’s currently mostly a TDM with RP sidelined for gameplay’s sake - people join to shoot xenos and slash marines - to have fun and treat this like the game it is. Hiding behind “muh RP” is ridiculous considering how colony preservation is entirely ignored and COs will often authorize literally taking the entire ship apart just to build the 10th cadeline, and that’s just a small exerpt of all the questionable things going on every round.
i.e - 50% of your marines died? Lead an epic flank to avenge them and either have a kino victory or get surrounded and slaughtered in a movielike fashion. The ones that survive can have their lifeboats fob 2.0 shipside or join as bravos next round if they desire to spend more time cadehugging.
Ridiculous state of playerbase, even the alleged “cheaters” tryharded less and were more fun to play with due to their casual approach than some. Downright shameful both sides have reached a point where the staff needs to come in for this and double so for OP being the pot calling the kettle in terms of fun preservation. Hope staff sorts it out somehow by clamping down on tryharding.
nonono don’t start that, they categorically did cheat and even admitted it don’t try to go ALLEGED CHEATERS OH THE CM CONSPIRACY!!?!?!?!?!!11!!
clamping down on tryharding is a weird thing to say though, how would you even do that? sorry you can’t push x tiles ahead of the front because you want to win the tdm? that ob you fired you knew was danger close, a little tryhard of you to be threatening the marines just to kill xenos…
Not for me to figure it out or what form it takes but to unpack “tryharding” - simply prevent players from enforcing their values of winning being more important than fun on the playerbase.
Things like
Rules against early evacs.
Rules against forcing the entire hive to afk in deep caves for extended periods of time - might as well bring back watching captures if xenos are forced to sit back and do nothing anyway
Restrict Queen impact on a round by clamping down on banishing again - immediately resorting to using it in every case and stuff like banishing drones (non-combat builders) - even if they devolve in protest - because they don’t want to go hunt survivors across the map is beyond ridiculous for something meant to be used sparingly, similar to BEs.
This is a very good idea especially considering the recent changes. Banish is basically a round removal. Why are we giving unvetted (and sometimes really gamey and unlikable) queen players the ability to round remove people? Something that for the marine side requires a whitelist and proof that you won’t be a dick with it to get?
“HRP” should never be used an as excuse to do things that make the game less fun for everyone. It’s like how D&D players often say you need to make a character that’s willing to go on adventures and work together in a party, otherwise the game doesn’t work.
This is a game about marines fighting xenomorphs. Nobody cares if it’s “HRP” for you to evac super early when marines could still try and win. Even if this is just a small colony not worth fighting for. Maybe, for the sake of the game, try roleplaying a character that actually wants to fight the xenomorphs on this colony.
It’s not like anybody is saying you can’t evac at all, the discussion is about people evacing unnecessarily early. If the operation is FUBAR then go ahead and evac. At the end of the day it’s about making the game fun for people.
I agree a lot with Pen. But that’s mainly because I like ship combat. I like Hijack.
Being HRP is CM to me is not acting like a human. It’s acting like a movie character. Because this is a server set in a movie universe. You should be aiming to be interesting or fun. Not racing to the bottom to play the most generic human.
Game is not competitive, it’s a roleplaying game with tdm elements (or other way around). «My commanding officer/queen forbids me from playing» is a bad point if we treat the game as a roleplaying game. Player control is the best thing a roleplaying game can have.
The problem here IMO is lack of emphasis. Fucking whitelisted CO assumes their job is to search for survivors and fuck off if there are none. That’s not true, you’re here to reclaim the colony and eliminate the threat. But all this «distress signal» stuff is simply misleading, this why people think they have no actual objectives here besides checking on colony.
There should be emphasis that you need to actually win as a CO, otherwise you’ll be fired/penalised/demoted. In general, evac should not be treated as good option, only as a last measure. Maybe there should be mechanical things to discourage aCO from evacuation, maybe some personal win/lose counter (just an example).
Same goes for cavehugging/cadehugging. People do that because it’s the easiest way to win the game. There is nothing to mechanically or ICly discourage you from doing so (except for nuke, but sadly it encourages cadehugging while discourages cavehugging).
So my point is that we need more clear objectives, both roleplaying (you need to win, clear the colony, etc.) and mechanical (if you cadehug for too long, xenos going to summon a mega xeno).
They literally attempted to evac after the first encounter with the xeno hive in the Aliens movie, stopped short by the Dropship pilots getting killed during flight.
So even with the “movie character” argument… evacuating to save your skin, makes 100% perfect sense if circumstances present themselves as primarily hopeless and pointless.
I’ve not called evac even if the Queen charges the Alamo if we have enough groundside. She can easily die overextending or her hive doesn’t follow-up or the entire momentum shifts due to lack of weeds. Hell I’ve witnessed it firsthand. Once I was a spitter with you and a ravager and you both died because only 3 of the 30 Xeno hive followed your orders to walk onto the Alamo. I’ve had 30 marines in the FOB forced off the Alamo take it back making the hive go from 30 to 8 due to well placed OT grenades and Xeno bodyblock/no regen off weeds. I’ve had foxtrot/reinforcements land cutting the Xenos in half while FOB is breached and completely turn the fight. The reality is Xenos are just as likely to die stupidly as any Bravo PVT. In the 3ish Queen rounds I’ve played - without missing a beat - 3 to 4 xenos die to survivors every single time. I’ve even started not calling evac when it’s perfectly possible to get back the ship and stabilize it leading to fun Skirmish fighting shipside.
I think making it a SOP violation is too invasive. Not to mention almost impossible to enforce as then we’d have to have Moderators/Admins who may not even Play/Are good at command making judgement calls about other XOs/COs calls. The punishment XOs/COs who call evac too early or order cadehugging when they have the numbers advantage is a boring round. The stigma of being a Boring XO/CO is punishment enough for me.
