Honestly I think the best way to prevent hell sieges from ever lasting that long is just to do the following
REMOVE SHIPSIDE DECON
I know, it sounds crazy, but think about it, you can get a truly absurd amount of metal from just the briefing room alone, a single marine/CT with a toolbelt and backpack (for holding tables/racks) can rack up hundreds of metal from deconning windows/tables/racks around the ship.
It completely circumvents how metal is meant to get more expensive as it’s repurchased over and over again, as you can just get a 2nd person to start deconning.
Without the ability to do shipside deconstruction marines can no longer create 300 metal without spending a single cent of req money (or buying req budget with intel).
It’s “”“”“illegal”“”“” in the sense that the aCO needs to announce “shipside decon allowed!111!!” before everyone can immediately start stripping the ship clean. Other then that, it’s basically free metal every round. There’s nothing stopping it except for a ‘lack of risk’, i.e. the situation needs to be ‘bad enough’ to justify it, but to be frank EVERY round gets to that stage at some point or another, so it effectively doesn’t mean anything.
Regardless, if you think the amount of metal shipside is huge, just wait until you hear about planetside…
Anyone who knows what they’re doing can source effectively hundreds of metal planetside- You aren’t going to eliminate this problem that way unless you nerf metal deconstruction yields, period.
Barrels in maintenance don’t fall under the shipside decon rule, so you can speedrun like 150 metal at roundstart legally.
Overall, I think the solution to 3 hour hell FOB sieges is NOT to fuck metal supply, but to BUFF xeno siege capability. The Destroyer/King was intended to do that, but sometimes it’s just fucked. We should give xenos something that’s more consistent.
Sieges are mindless slogs- Marines cadehug, xenos click on cades that get repaired instantly while they get shelled from visual range. I do think it’s gotten better though, so it’s at the point where I’m actually relatively content with how the game is sitting right now.
Re: @Cyberspy (because slowmode is a curse upon the collective human psyche)
That sounds like ‘skip hijack’ but rebranded, I recall Drathek saying any skip-hijack mechanic is a red line he’ll never approve. I’m all for it, but realistically… it’s not gonna happen.
I think at a certain point (maybe the 3 hour mark mentioned here) a vote should just be enacted that has marines depart the planet and end the round in a draw rather than the coin flips or buffs that staff sometimes offer.
People don’t like the idea of just being rolled over, so the mutual ending seems like it might be a decent alternative.
this is just trying to divert the thread into a new anti hijack thread god no please
hijack stays shut up don’t bring up ending the round on evac AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
but yeah shipside deconstruction is extremely stupid and I hate it because it also penalizes any devs who want to add or shift things shipwide because they have to consider how people are going to tear it apart for raw materials
plus once you begin deconstruction civvies and anyone on the ship can EASILY get access to equipment they aren’t supposed to like firearms and stuff or any visiting event role etc
final argument against shipside deconstruction: it looks ugly as fuck
Ship decon is soulful though. Also you can deconstruct planet with the same result, all you need is autolathe. This won’t solve the issue, just will make MT and CE more boring.
This is just trying to divert the thread into a new anti hijack thread god no please
I like hijack, though. The emphasis in the thread title however is on how to end these three hour+ sieges and what follows afterward is a big elephant in the room however much it’s ignored. People don’t want to lose even if it’s been 3+ hours. Less “skip hijack” more introduce a tie if staff are at the point of intervening to end the round either way.
That aside, I’m a little skeptical shipside decon is a significant factor in it actually dragging out very long. More significant is probably building a lathe in the FOB and feeding it metal rods on maps with fences (this is probably an exploit though) or being resourceful and getting more than enough metal planetside like BasilHerb said. You can barely trust people to even bring things from the ship when asked at times, self-sufficient comtechs and MTs can go crazy with building and with little effort.
Marines are always going to find a way, maybe Xenos need more than just the trapper or King as surefire cade destruction techniques.
3 hour hell rounds will end when the objective is no longer “extermination.” If both sides have to fight for a neutral objective on the map in order to win, there’s no more hellchoke sieges on either side.
Yeah, it’s a shame the objective based gameplay we were focused on got fucked over- Seems like CM has some kind of curse that stops people from implementing large scale overhauls, every time something happens and we end up with a half-baked result attached to the existing TDM structure.
I feel the best path for the game would be if, as others noted, we moved away from pure extermination to objective based victory conditions.
The only path for xenomorphs to achieve victory is to attempt a FOB siege, considering its been stated >50% of rounds end in a xenomorph victory, it reasons that a majority of game rounds are going to devolve into a fob siege, which is a kind of gameplay we almost universally agree is not as enjoyable as other forms of gameplay such as open frontline combat or hive sieges.
But, marines desperately need barricades or else they just die and get overrun. I don’t know if you’d ever be able to move away from FOB sieges as Marines make mini-FOBs wherever they go. There will always be a siege.
Perhaps its a issue someone more gameplay sense wise and coder wise can tackle.
See the reason i think that’s bad is because what if it’s like two xenos delaying round end, if you end the round with marines leaving at the three hour mark it’s basically a xeno win.
It needs diverse objectives. Xenos are supposed to be the primary killur group.
Have random intel and other “significant” objectives that are assigned at round start. Xenos arent aware of the actual mission op.
-A safe room with some high value survivors.
-Nuke the Planet. Destroy XXXX station intel.
Bug Stomp (actual kill all bugs mission)
Investigate Cause of event (actual cause, use the intel to piece what happened together/extract after disabling transports or something) actually get power running back to a specific part of the station, security or medical, and download records.
Hold for re-enforcements, like how we get PMCs and whatnot sometimes but a MASSIVE # of them.
-WY flavored operations would be sweet. Gather XXX xenos, queen jelly or something. A WY objective for the PMC group would be cool. (Find, kill station synth)
Be neat to do something like “dropships” for xenos. Have spacecraft in orbit that are full of xenos. Could be escapees that ended up having hugged onboard and thats the justification for a xeno “reinforcement” to drop onto the planet.
Anyone who knows what they’re doing can source effectively hundreds of metal planetside- You aren’t going to eliminate this problem that way unless you nerf metal deconstruction yields, period.
At least you can’t decon the map while you are actively in a FOB siege, and even outside of FOB sieges you’re always at risk of a runner dragging you into the darkness when you walk a little offscreen from your buddy.
It is generally off putting how easy marines do ship deconstruction. And its also ridiculus that it even happens (when marines are on-world). Like, imagine a captain of an Iowa class just announce “Deconstruct the ship, so we can make bunkers on the japanese/vietnamese shore!”.
If you think a 3 hour round is long, you should’ve played back in the day when 8 hour rounds were fairly normal. Sometimes you’d have rounds last all day. Defcon was an experience, as well as the combination of maps like Ice V2 and camping ladders.
I feel like theres a way to make the gameplay fun without making it kill the hive every time.
I agree with shorter round times, the two hour mark is the sweet spot IMO at max “average long round”
I’ve considered “Hive Walls” within a certain range of the actual hive stronger/harder to breach. Xeno re-enforcements like infected dropships landing at certain times based on the Marine / Xeno pop difference at that moment. Other things to make xeno more fun.
I dont mind dying as marine, marine fraggers should have the opportunity to frag and come back if they die.
More diverse objectives for “win” conditions for our RP bros would be awesome too. Its a hard balance.
TLDR is if we make the side objectives the primary and make them fun over tedious then the hive sprint would be more for the fraggers. And RP stuff would be for the RP bros.
Prevent decon (lol, lmao) + buff trapper (and boiler?) damage vs cades to pre-nerf values.
Introduce a boon to xenos which lets them place a pylon that slowly breaks cades in X by Y area.
Remove bipods, xenos cannot siege against a 2x(more?) DPS increase.
Fix req bulk buying - if you buy 10x metal in a single go the price doesn’t increment and will increment only by 1 at the authorization process. Fun.
