Title. Basically, squad leaders should be able to get small machines they can place down for marines to track and rally to a certain point.
Xenomorphs are supposed to be the faction that is smaller, but stronger individually. They also have the advantage of night vision and being able to see marines behind walls.
But it feels kinda weird that xenomorphs, a hivemind who isn’t capable of empathy or reason or researching war tactics and what not can rally and organize each other better then marines can.
You may argue “but more organized marines would make it so xenos always lose”. But counterargument, xenos can still cap with gimmicks like queen screech. Even in Chance’s Claim, where marines march as one unit north to the hive, xenos have gotten caps.
I think giving squad leaders devices for marines to follow would be fun for marines, and would make sense, as an IRL military would likely have something similar as well.
Isnt it literally the opposite? A queen is roughly as intelligent as a marine in lore, and humans are individuals with their own aims, wills and motivations.
Xenomorphs are all subservient and psychically in line with the Queen- The hive is an extension of the Queen, like arms and legs are for a human.
An opponent who can direct their forces like an extension of their physical body and move them as one cohesive mind is obviously going to be far more maneuverable, adaptive and coordinated than an enemy who must spend half their time screaming at crayon eating jarheads to “stop fucking pushing the fucking hellchoke deltards holy shit your SL is capped stop fucking dying and fallback to hydro with alpha like i told you 7 minutes ago”
It is thus only natural xenos have an in-game advantage in command and control.
there are a couple of True… 's here between you and basil but I agree overall that marines need just- like a little fucking beacon or something with the supply beacon sprite or whatnot that’ll just be something selectable via SL tracker. it’s stupid to say we can’t put a GPS thing on a big fuckoff box in 2182.
If marines don’t follow the CO announcing "OH MY GOD THERE’S OWL KILLING EVERYONE IN HYDRO GO STOP HIM"x28, They won’t follow these.
TGMC has something like this, and even then people don’t really pay attention to those, it’s mostly announcements they are listening to (like CM). I get the idea, but to be honest even as Xeno I don’t pay attention to resin markers.
I typed out a super long post just to trash it. the TLDR was: marines should be on the SL, and the SL should be following their overwatch/map/XO’s orders. What waypoint crap would you want?
There are a few cases I could see being marked though. Dead IOs. Hard to reach dead you want people to notice and focus on. The person at comms marking his spot before xenos kill him. Flanks. Queen’s last known position/angle on front. A ‘danger backliners killed the last 5 guys here’ marker.
I don’t think marines need a marker for their missions, waypoints, etc, as much as markers for ‘NOTICE THIS DUMBASSES!’
Dead IOs are present on the tacmap- Every dead marine already has a marker in the game.
Currently, a competent player can easily navigate their way to the exact position of any dead marine on the tacmap due to map knowledge.
There’s a PR that’s close to being fullmerged that actually gives a real-time marker for your character on the tacmap (so you know where you are on the map at all times), so even newbies can do it.
In all honesty, even if a marker system was introduced I doubt it would actually do anything to help. We’d either need to include a tutorial for it and force every newbie to play it, or make it stupid obvious. (The current trackers are quite opaque and unintuitive as to what they do)
A marker would do absolutely nothing for me because all someone needs to do is say “Rally at Admin” and I’ll just beeline towards it without the need for a tracker- Every competent player can move to any region of the map without a guide- Just say the name of a location and they know exactly where to go.
I can only really see markers being useful for newer players, and even then half of them don’t even know how the SL tracker works.
The current xeno marks require you to interact with the marker HUD overlay.
The SL tracker is far simpler than that- Yet knowledge of how to change it to track the LZ or FTL is somehow arcane knowledge that only a few players know of.
I haven’t a single doubt that if a marker system was introduced similar to the xeno resin mark system, newbies wouldn’t actually use it without extra help- And they’re really the only players who’d actually need one, anyways.
Markers are the SL/aSL on PDA tracker and Commands access to 24/7 tacmap + battlemap drawing.
Adding another tracker arrow wouldn’t do anything, but giving command the power to forcetrack(like Queen) everyone to FOB/specific SLs/CO would be good.
This topic comes up often and for good reason.
'cause command is way more fun as xeno then marine.
As it stands, xenos are objectivly superior in terms of their “CIC”.
This includes all tools used and avalibel to convey, aquire, and use information.
(Im ignoring the fact some of these can turn off. That aint the point)
Xenos have:
Live tacmap for everyone.
A static tacmap command can draw on
A HUD marker to point to the commander /& base
A second HUD marker to point towards custome map markers
Custome map markers that the commander and leaders can place
Comms
Cams accecibel to everyone
Announcements
Comms highligths for leaders
Marines have:
Static tacmap they can draw on
A HUD marker to point to the leader /& base
Comms
Cams avalibel only to people in CIC (5-6 people)
Announcments
Comms highligths for leaders
Xenos, have more.
That is just a straigth out fact.
The problem isnt that its more though, the problem is what they have is more fun.
Ovie queen can often be a more relaxing experince then SO.
Wich is kinda bs.
Custome markers could help with that, but not nececarily.
There can be a ton of ways we could potentially improve the command experince for marines.
Its not a “xenos have more then we marines”. Its “Marine command is way less fun then xeno command”.
And that, is no longer a discussion of balance or fairness. But one about making stuff more fun.