Fob rework strategies

General Discussion
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Looking for a consensus on what the best actions are AFTER the front is wiped. As that is where the fob rework comes into play when marines are on the backfoot and losing ground.

I have been seeing command and marines by default/habit order fallback to fob, however I think huddling to fob is detrimental/outdated with the new rework. The mindset should now be for everyone to huddle around the power generator and treat that as a new fob.

This leads to another issue in a front wipe situation is that you do not have the numbers to defend both the power gen and comms at the same time. Xeno controlling both comms is a win condition (albeit a delayed 2-hour win condition for King). While xenos controlling the power gen is the most straightforward win condition. I feel at that point its best to evac or in my case suiciding myself to the xenos to avoid participating in hijack slop.

The entirety of bravo should also be sent guarding the power generator and clearing out the areas around it too.

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Generally you evac, yes, at least from a command perspective holding the FOB without the automated defenses + down anywhere from 1/4th to 3/4ths your force is untennable

Is it just me or do the rounds feel much, much faster now…

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No more 1 hour long FOB sieges if xenos just target the transformer and the marines use up their backup generator

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I actually yapped up a storm replying to this, to then kinda realise that this is still an ever-changing PR and there’s a lot of hypotheticals about how this rework is going to play out (particularly about how far the metal nerf goes) to the point that I don’t think it’s possible to say any definitive strategies:

First round had so little metal that Marines built 30 barricades at transformers (2 lines in a square) and had no metal on the front while next rounds had more and more barricades & sandbags. It’s hard to judge it until it gets full-merged.

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issue is with the Mat nerf the PR has makes it not particularly feasible to hold the power generators as you got to keep in mind the LZs for the most part tend to only have 2 main paths and some times narrow chokes on the other sides. what’s more if things go south at the LZ you can evac and get out.

But with the Generators you can be readily surrounded and get cut off from the LZ meaning they are nothing more then a death trap. What’s more there is very little POINT even bothering holding the gens in the first place, they are too far to be covered from the new toys we are given.

EDIT:( to clear up what i am saying i mean that LZ tend to have better Mat efficiency compared to building up the Gens)

And the xenos are not going to attack the LZ when the generators are up, there is simple no point to do so. they are just going to swarm the generators wipe out the defenders and then move on the LZ. (Its how there is little point for the xenos to take the LZ sub 40 due to the over powered turrets. i have seen it done but most the time its just not worth it.)

The only thing the Rework changes really is it stops sneak hijacks but that’s all it really can do from a gameplay POV. Like i get the idea behind it but its just not practical to skirmish for it and you are better off just heading to the LZ and digging in the best you can before its time to evac.

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I was going to write something but realized none of its going to get considered anyway.

Just push hard as you can first push and if you lose, use the generator 10 mins (5 mins when it falls, 5 mins backup) to heal everyone then evac with whatever you can so you can squeeze some kind of enjoyment out of the game doing a 2nd desperate push on shipside (even if I hate hijack in its current iteration).

You can try to extend it by deconstructing the map for metal but whats the point, you would need to do this for the entire map and they already nerfed metal rods in autolathe, so they’ll find a way to nerf colony metal gains if its used too much anyway.

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I suppose I’ll make a guide eventually, but the point is that you should always be looking to find a new offensive. Over the last year or so, Marines have really leaned in to the defensive playstyles, and stuff like research stims, greenos, and nuke haven’t really helped. Has the FOB rework ended defensive marine gameplay? No, it wasn’t supposed to, but it made it impossible to win by playing defensively.

That being said, the rework is slowly slowly starting to click for a lot of players as the TM goes on, so let me give you guys some tips on how this feature is really meant to be used.

The most important point is this: Obstacles impede movement for everyone.

Cades are an obstacle to both sides, and just because it has folding ones for entrances doesn’t mean they still don’t slow you down. What I’m seeing is people are still setting up cades at FOB “just in case”, or because they don’t feel safe, or out of habit. These cades make it more difficult to charge out. If you want to be able to retake the transformer if you lose it, have a clear path to it from FOB so you can gain momentum. Mobile Marines is what kills Xenos. If you plan on holding the LZ, you’re going to lose. Nobody’s won from that position yet, but several rounds have been won by retaking the transformer and kicking the shit out of Xenos in the process.

You can always retreat to transformer, but transformer, even with a decent amount of cades, isn’t meant to be held forever, if you get surrounded and breached, there’s no dropship to hop on and escape to, so if you still have the Marines to wage an assault with, it’s best to fall back to FOB and use the timer given to you by the backup generator to organize and rearm.

There’s also other options. Hop on the dropship at the LZ and redeploy to the other LZ. You don’t need to defend the FOB when Xenos are near it, it’ll defend itself, so you can sucker punch Xenos from behind while they’re distracted by defenses. Get creative guys, the same old same old won’t work with this.

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Here is the fundamental issue the gameplay and its asymmetrical nature requires some level of being able to hold ground…And the rework is gutting the over all ability for the marines to hold ground.

while yes the marines can win with this rework but its harming one of the fundamental ability’s of the marines that is the construction of hard points. (A hard point is fortification that the xenos can’t just flow through.)

The dichotomy of Low Vs High pop and the knock effects of attritional losses. This is a thread i made about the issues of attrition and how it changes low Vs high.

One of the key points i layed out as to why marines tend to lose more on low pop is because of compounding effect that any given loss has on over all combat efficiency. Now one of the matters i bought up is how the loss of hard point construction from less material and labor shortages, decreases the overall staying power of the marines by a good degree.

This is due to the fact that hard points are useful in stalling out the xenos and restricting their movement and even if the hard point can’t hold it can allow for scattered marines time to fall back and regroup.

whats more it can act as force multiplier as due to the asymmetrical gameplay the xenos for the most part can’t get very good damage off on dug in marines but the marines can dish out a good deal. This means is that less marines are needed to stall out a xeno push. What this means in effect is that if you have hard points constructed at key points fragmented forces have much greater survivability if they can just only get to the hard point.

In gutting the ability to make hard points you are giving the xenos a massive advantage when it comes to maneuver warfare… while also keeping the xenos ability to make hardpoints themselves, which only serves to compound the issue.

Now the queen can flank with much less impunity, She doesn’t have to worry about there being a hard point on the flank being there to stalling her out. before if the comtecs were on their game, the queen ether would be herded into the marines main push OR would lose the element of surprise. Which then allowing the marines to turn foot and respond.

What’s worse if the xenos are sneaky they can weed and wall behind the main marine force restricting the marines ability to pullback safely. So now the xenos can restrict the marines movement but the marines can no longer as effectively restrict the xenos movements.

We also can’t forget to talk about readily the xenos are able to heal and recover. In the gutting of hardpoints its makes the ability for the xenos to raid the medic line many times simpler. they no longer have to worry about being able to get the medics in the first place nor do they have to worry about path to get back into main xeno lines as there is not going to be any flank/choke securing hardpoints.

This in effect forces the medics farther into the front line less they risk getting wiped by ether Backliners or a queen flank. And we all know what happens when medics are healing lads to close into the front… they risk loseing the bodys on a xeno counter push OR are to have much less efficiency geting the bodys up or healing the wounded. Because now they are in range of the long range xenos meaning they have to deal with taking damage. They also got to deal with being jockeyed around ether by ever flowing marine mass.

does all of this happen right now? No but the xenos are given much greater leverage over the use of the tools they are given at their disposal. while taking away the much of the effect of the tools that the marines have to counter.

You are acting like playing defensive is some how BAD, its just one more tactic to be made use of by the marines. i don’t see the issue in of itself that having such gameplay is bad, but i can see how its bad to take away as you unnecessarily striping complexity from the game. many lads really don’t like the unga ball that is the meta and all striping out defensive gameplay does is reinforce the fact that the unga ball is the only real meta that can work out.

Here is the thing i understand the need to deal with never ending FOB sieges but you are throwing out the baby with the bath water… And with the many xeno benefits they get for holding comms, including the King ( which was made to deal this very issue) the marines are put on timetable to push out they can’t just hold forever for Nuke or Stims.

Talking about nukes it was made to deal with XENO stalling the marines out and to force them out. We have things to encourage to not just resting on our laurels, we do not need this rework as it is now.

TL;DR

The Rework just dumbs down the gameplay and gives massive tactical advantage to the xenos.

Addendum: Mines and turrets

While yes mines and turrets can be used to restrict xenos movement, they have little to no true value on their own. Other then OT mines which is whole other beast, Mines are not about to kill or even deter any xeno by itself. Only in tandem with support does the mines become a issue, they are great at the sides or even at the front of the fighting where marines can follow up.

Hell they are even great when mixed with a turret… but you know where they really shine? in front of a ether lightly guarded Hardpoint or hardpoint turret mix. A runner takes one look at that and says ‘fuck it’ and tries to find a way around.

This also gets to other matter at hand the turrets. They also shine best when added behind a hardpoint! like the given before example, They can deter light xeno forces and stall even larger ones.

But a turret on its own simple just is not enough deter most xenos they are just going to get into its blind spot and kill it. Or if got Omni turret they can easily swarm it and destroy it. yes it can stall, but with out the save guard that the hard point gives you are just better off slapping down the turret on the front line for some Free AP IFF DPS.

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Imma be real theres no reason to cade LZ at all, if you cade LZ you are wasting metal. All metal and resources should be diverted to the transformer.

THE LZ DOES NOT NEED ANY MARINES THERE. THE AIMBOT WALLHACK ROCKETS AND MEGA TURRETS + FENCES CAN SOLO DEFEND THE ENTIRE LZ.

The new base of operations ought to now be the transformer- Any marine defending FOB while power is on is wasting their time, and being detrimental. The transformer is the number one priority, and marines need to start treating it like one.

I hear people going “uhhhh now we need to defend FOB, transformer, AND comms”

Bullshit, the only things that matter are the transformer and comms. You’re defending the same amount of objectives, same as before.

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I still realy hope we get several transformers per LZ, this way it would not be that easy for xenos to just throw their full force at one place and they would either have to spread out or move from one to another to keep control of all of them while marines would just need to be able to push to one from time to time to keep defenses up

I would perhaps also rather like to see comms linked to holding transformer or something, they were failing the task that transformers are suppsoed to have and feel just excessive with them around

also one mroe bit, I was not playing at that time but I have checked git logs, 3 years ago there was MASSIVE price reduce to cades, before barbed wire was 2 metal, metal cade 6 metal, pasteel cade 10 plasteel. No foldable metal cades.

Removing all of engi mats is a bit harsh but there is more stuff for CT to spend budget on coming their way soon.

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Can confirm, Cade prices used to be way way way more expensive. I still sometimes fuck up barbed wire cause in my head I go “yeah, 2 metal per wire… sounds about right!”

Marines were fine without infinite metal before, they’ll be perfectly fine now. I still think the buff to cades back then was honestly unwarranted, and they’ve only gotten more power creeped since.

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Having played and watched a lot of this PR I really think there is little reason to hold the Transformers at all. In most rounds even in higher pop Marines can barely hold a Comms relay and FOB let alone another objective that also doesn’t actually help you when you would really need it.

Those defenses are useful pretty much only when the front is still active and you have spare manpower to keep the transformer working. Once the front collapses if you are sitting at the transformer you are just as dead as any marine holding Comms would be.

I know the argument will be just make FOB at the Transformers but that’s not really viable since it lacks the benefits that your LZ fob would have and would take more resources that you are now lacking to hold. You can effectively be attacked from every angle at a Transformer making defense even more difficult which also leads you to being encircled. There is no way to fall back or survive if that happens other than just retreating to the LZ once the front falls or you see the first trickle of Xenos at the Transformer. So you need to make defenses at the LZ anyways and may as well just make it the FOB.

I think this PR also just seems to want to push the everyone should attack angle without also considering how something like this does hurt other aspects of the game. Marines now basically are expected to just throw themselves at the Xenos and either win or die on the spot it feels and that loses its appeal. Most people do not want to just charge into the hive in a suicidal manner and are expected to be more cautious, they are not just RTS units who will just run to the enemy base because a point on the map says so.

I think the real issue isn’t really FOB sieges either. I think its that you go from a FOB siege on the ground to a round two FOB siege in Hijack and that’s where the fatigue comes in. I think if you wanted to make something to really improve that part of the game you would make Hijack rarer, like if the Xenos overrun a dropship instead of just calling one down every round.

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The price reduction is thrown around a lot as a sort of “gotcha” fact but never is it paired with the reality in this PR that metal is less abundant from scavenging sources. Making metal buildables more expensive is not that big of a deal if you can acquire said metal to build with, but the trickle of metal you can scavenge on top of the reductions in starting amount really compounds the issue people are having with the PR.
Most people seem relatively okay with the FOB rework part of the PR. I personally dislike many elements of it but that isn’t what I’m replying to talk about. The metal economy changes have a tremendous impact in the way the game plays and @Catzonwheelz put it best by mentioning hardpoints, a concept that was vital to maintaining the ability to recover from a reversal as the marine team. Xenos still have this ability in spades, in fact it’s even easier than of recent with some of the building PRs relating to resin buildables, all while being the team whose asymmetric focus is mobility and durability over their enemies. Marines at this point have mostly range, numbers, and revives as their remaining advantages, but these are situational and often lost at the expense of the ever present ungaball approach to the game. This rework feels like it completely ignores these kinds of aspects of the gameplay in favor of siege bad push good attempts to fix things. These fixes are bandaids applied to the symptoms of the problems they try to address while not handling the root causes.

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Comtech was basically killed in this rework, one of the main features of comtech is the ability to build cadelines and stop xeno’s from advancing and murderballing the entire front.

Now because comtech only spawns with limited mats its become kind of useless considering that the SL and FTL can do everything the comtech can do.

Static defences became a bit harder to protect now with the lack of mats. 36 metal can only get you 6 normal cades. 20 can get you 3 normal cades which is what the comtech spawns if they don’t purchase mats and each metal cade purchased is 10 metal. Not only that but all metal barrels no longer give out metal and only give you wooden planks.

The optimal cade box would be 5 by 5. So including 4 entrances for 4 sides, which costs 8 to make a foldable out of normal cadelines. And 6 for normal cades. It will be 4x8 = 32 metal + (16x6 =96) You’d need 128 metal to make a 5 by 5 cadeline. So 2 1/2 stacks of metal. without the wires

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I honestly would prefer that there was no 5 minute + another 5 minute grace period for backup power. It only serves to delay the round and I’ve seen xenos get gibbed as marines turn backup power back on just as xenos storm the fob and marines evac. I understand that this is a defeatist attitude, but I refuse to engage in a xenos victory lap that is the current iteration of hijack and what appears to be the same for this rework (although too early to tell).

I think there is a big misconception on how this game plays out after a front wipe. I understand the intent of this fob rework is to avoid the siege slop for xenos (poor experience if they do not have multiple boilers). And instead have a power transformer both sides would push and counter push on.

In reality, a counter push from the marines side does not really happen, as all the aggressive marines are dead from the front wipe. The siege slop worked as all the defensive (cade hugger) marines survived and were able to out attrition the xenos. Then you pray for latejoiners to come in or tech points to wake up more troops. In that situation, the CT’s are gods and will determine the outcome if they had properly caded and removed obstructive walls for optimal firing lines.

It also doesn’t help that the marines tools have slowly been nerfed. What should have been a mortar users dream as the power transformer is out in the open has been neutered due to the stun/killing power of the mortar being removed. Stims also used to be an option to make up for marines in the late game. I don’t even know how research works now, but I do know that stims are no longer a reliable option to fall back on. The medical rework is also shit for the lowly rifleman as you are really reliant on a good corpsman which are few and far between.

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You are just heavily undestating how bloody many cades can engineers get even with fob rework, they just choose not to, you start with 75 sandbags and can get 100 more, every bloody engineer can get enough sandbags for 35 sandbags cades. Lets say the metal would not be removed from the vendor and you could insed of the 100 bags, get 90 metal, that is 15 metal cades… it is not that engineers do not have option to get cade materials, several have stated that they choose not to with the fob rework and jsut grab m56d or some shit rather then the 35 cades worth of bags. But any sandbag cades get used in one of two rounds at best and generly mariens still only build metal cades, so I DAUBT you lack mats when you do not use one whole (currently main) resource.

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It’s just you.

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A lot of people talk about scavenging metal as if it were one of the main sources of mats. This just isn’t the case- I can count the number of people who actually bother decon planetside on one hand. Seriously, in the vast majority of rounds engineers decon to clear sightlines via breach tools, they dont decon stuff for metal besides super easy sources like windows.

Realistically, most engineers basically source all their mats from req or planetside metal spawns. Planetside scavenging had stupid potential and basically allowed any competent CT access to infinite mats, so I see this as more fixing an unintentional exploit rather than a nerf with significant in-game impact- That’s my two cents, anyways.

Real talk?

If engineers stopped wasting cades on FOB we wouldnt be seeing half as much complaints. People will spend half the metal supply on an FOB which doesnt need any cafes whatsoever, and then wonder why theres not enough for the transformer or the front line.

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I change my mind, bring back the fob rework. I hate engaging in siege slop, I only engage in it due to my desire to win over xenos and not because it is a good mechanic.

Honestly with the changes the majority of bravo should head to the frontlines to make an even bigger deathball.

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