What if we added a minimum range to mortars? Imo, a big chunk of FOB advantage is simply a competent mortarman being able to lase AND fire on their own.
I mean, mortar teams being able to shell shit within 20 metres is weird anyways.
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It kinda makes sense, but on the other hand if you canât mortar neither near fob nor caves, what are you going to mortar? But honestly sounds cool and youâll have to move mortar (for example to comms minifob) to stay useful.
Xenos wonât be losing that much, if balancing is done decisively enough. The thing about the xenos is that itâs exactly most fun when youâre in that situation where the marine hordes are pushing on all sides and you need to exploit their carelessness to thin down the push. The real problem would be the marine mains who are gonna be really mad about losing all the crutches.
Regarding the âbut the xenos can spam defensesâ, itâs kind of a rant for another topic, but there was so much marine power creep that makes xeno defenses nigh worthless - masterkey, breaching shotgun, breaching charges, mortar buffs, 2 screen CAS firemissions. On the open maps xeno wall forts get removed instantly and in the caves it hardly every matters, because you canât or shouldnât build up the caves much.
in some ways this is true, but I think playing as an average squaddie you also have to consider how much it absolutely blows to click on thick resin walls for 20 years just like it sucks to click on reinforced/plasteel cades-- using the masterkey/XM51 on resin walls is pretty slow and very inefficient on the ammo for those weapons (although they do overtrivialize doors) breaching charges similarly are very limited in the amount the ship usually has and ordering more isnt ever worth it since everything costs more or equal to metal, AP, and spec ammo, which are always gonna have priority.you have CAS nuking it all but that relies on both your JTAC and your GP being sentient human beings which is⌠far from common
and like, spending a breaching charge on a resin wall is super situational given a hivelord can throw six more walls up in like 10 seconds
Well, if thick resin walls shouldnât be a nuisance even to the squad marines, then to whom should they be a nuisance to? Also, marines have effectively unlimited buck. You can take and use as much as you want.
Anyway, this is sort of trying to obfuscate the big picture with cherry picked cases. Itâs like when during techwebs or roundstart godstims almost every round would be a marine speedrun, but there would always be maybe a couple of marines that went perma and if you argue form the perspective of those marines, you could make the case that xenos arenât weak enough yet.
this is a bad faith argument, my point is that just like xenos hate getting mortared and clicking on cades for an hour of siege slop marines hate clicking on thick resin and fighting in CQC cave hellchokes. both are unfun for the respective side having to assault. With the current objectives being extermination however, if sides arenât biased on the defensive/donât have good defensive tools whoever gets momentum first wins, fullstop(which is already somewhat true), unless the objectives for winning become something else that wonât change.
This is a somewhat common perspective, particularly among the newer players but itâs also a really misguided one. Ok, so xenos shouldnât attack the FOB because itâs unfun. Marines shouldnât attack the caves because itâs unfun. Now lets add the non-extermination objectives. Marines now sit in the FOB, xenos now sit in the caves and both do crossword puzzles for 2 hours. Both sides donât have to interact with each other. Is it really what people want? Why are you trying to turn CM into a bad Euro board game?
Even the FOB sieges are fun, but in moderation. The problem is that the low-dev CM eras traditionally have mostly unchecked marine power creep with the stuff that gets buffed being mostly the crutches. But all of them go into that final faction power equation. If CAS+mortar on average is going to kill 50% of xenos, then the infantry only needs to kill the other 50%, which means that marines are going to be relatively underpowered when pushing the caves. The next dev team should understand that. The proper way is redistributing the marine power back to the infantry. Which means culling or outright removing the crutches.
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this also isnât really what I was getting at, part of the un-funness of the fob/cave siege is that you have to either see it to itâs conclusion or sit on your ass until nuke/king, youâre forced to actually break the fob/caves hold.
I totally agree that it can definitely be fun to skirmish the caves and the fob, and some fighting around them is a really unique gameplay experience, the issue is that every round necessitates ending with slamming your head against unbreakable cave walls or the fob; if the game ending objectives center more around controlling the big battlefields thereâd be more incentive to actually fight on them.
To that end;
I also agree with this, currently(and in the past even moreso with Tank) power is centralized in the hands of players who get lucky with a handful of especially impactful jobs, which also means if bad players or exceptionally good players get those rolls it can throw the whole round around. T3s are similar in this vein, the average xeno could take more punishment and deal more damage if there wasnt a cadre of walking tanks with instakill combos.
CAS especially as it stands is a big reason why xenos are so heavily encouraged to just wait in the defensive terrain, why waste the effort of building up defenses and contesting the big battlefields when they have fire support immune, more favorable terrain that feeds them more caps for the lategame.
The current game feels like a game of who has the most patience to just sit on their favored side of the map and make the other side kill themselves on fortifications, which sucks.
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Side objectives already exist: comms. Not like that solved much.
is it Chances that has comms literally have a spawn location inside LZ2?
Not even a side objective there
Bumping for fixing req budget not updating, removing bipods and buffing boilers instead of bothering with muh advanced game rework solutions. FOB sieges werenât so hellish when mats werenât overabundant, marines didnât get a *2+ dmg buff on defensive and boilers werenât neutered.
Mortar minimum and maximum range would be good too to actually enforce moving it though - as it stands it might aswell be firing from Almayer.
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You forget to think about the other side, such as CTs. Itâs frustrating to waste 2 hours on building FOB just for it to get completely countered by trappers. People put effort and time in building FOBs and they should be rewarded, not punished by some crutch. I mained CT mostly during the pre-nerfed trapper era and it was fucking aids. Building FOB is already pretty unrewarding as FOB siege is not even guaranteed or by the time FOB gets besieged marines may not have numbers to even defend it. No need to make it even worse. âFOB is not supposed to holdâ is just as toxic attitude.
I agree with other points though. But boiler is already as strong as it needs to be to deal with cades. It is efficient. It just not always enough to have one boiler to break a FOB if there are good CTs working on cades.
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Yeah, much like in every single game, media and irl walls are countered by sieging tools. Why would CM be different?
If you care so much for wall builders enjoyment then I assume you agree hivelord resin walls should be tremendously buffed so as to not be countered by masterkey, breaching shotgun and explosives, because the hivelord has put alot of time into it and they canât even repair these walls. 
Are you saying FOB is supposed to hold? Should the game just never end besides marine victory?
If youâre being sieged with no way to push out then yes the FOB should fall, because otherwise you get endless slop sieging for many many hours due to deadlocked game where one side wonât or cannot push and the other canât either despite trying.
Again, every single game knows this, but CM is uhhh special I guess.
The counter to boilers (and siege tools in every single game) is pushing out and breaking the siege. But due to nerfs thatâs no longer necessary as you can endlessly repair the cades causing â3+hour hell FOB siegesâ because xenos do not have an effective way to break them.
Dunno what games do you mean. Cades on CM are akin to trenches, and in most games to take trenches you are supposed to assault them, which is way more engaging for all sides than⌠bombing them from offscreen for X time.
I mean this is one of the reasons why railgun is not in the game. You can really fuck hivelord over by OBing what he built, but OBs are limited and hivelord has better time rebuilding. So idk whatâs your point. Masterkey, BS and explosives are not used from offscreen and xenos can counter them.
FOB should have a fair chance to hold, same with hive. This is how back and forth gameplay should work and actually works, xenos lose momentum and numbers against cades and now marines can recover and have a chance to push out. If FOB wasnât supposed to hold at all, then every loss of initial encounter would lead to evac and hijack
Are these games in this room right now? Can you maybe name a single one? For example in MOBAs you have your main base where you have some advantage which allows you to recover and comeback. Just because youâve been pushed back to base doesnât necessarily mean a loss is imminent.
Great, youâre so smart. Marines are retreating to the FOB because theyâve lost momentum and numbers, and now the only thing they can do to avoid losing is to push
They have nothing to do with trenches since they block movement, which trenches never did whether irl or fiction.
Assaulting trenches is also done with siege engines though.
Railgun not being in the game has nothing to do with that since by that logic neither cas nor mortar nor OBs would be in. CAS, mortar, and simply shooting the walls are all offscreen and are pretty much limitless anyway.
My point is that counters exist for a reason and they should be effective, youâre saying they should not be so im bringing up the point that hivelords should too then be buffed.
And you counter them by pushing out, not rebuilding walls and praying the marines will die to a spitter.
Yeah, it should have a chance to hold if marines can actually push out and contest. If they cannot then the game should end.
Yeah, see above. If they canât push anymore then they should lose, because they clearly cannot win either if they cannot push. What else do you suggest should happen, delaying for 5 hours till the server fills with enough latejoins causing the â3+ hour hell FOB siegeâ? Thatâs the only way to replenish numbers besides defibbing players which doesnât take longer than 5 minutes (because theyâd perma).
Literally every single game that supports bases and siege units, you should name one that doesnât instead.
If you want to talk mobas, if youâre sieged in them youâve no map control and are about to lose the game. The other team gets to ward the map freely and ambush you whenever you try to leave, gets all map objectives for free and youâve waves naturally pushing into your towers, either via upgraded minions or because you canât walk out to depush. The only way to break this is to push out, engage the enemy team and win, otherwise youâll lose within 15 minutes tops.
Same should apply to CM, with FOB siege ending within 30 minutes tops if marines cannot push out and actually contest anything.
Sadly with boilers being too weak this extends to hours because the winning side has no means to break it despite having full advantage.
Then you have the âcomebackâ where marines get OP greenos and/or stims because they canât naturally push and the game takes 3 hours.
an example would be Dota 2. Where you might win lanes, and be ahead, but then siege the T3s and lose spectacularyl because of the advtantages of highground and towers. Then they can have a comeback and might actually be able to fight them outside of highground. This is how 90% of the games are played, with the guys on the defensive have an advantage if the others want to siege it.
Sure, you get more gold and XP then the defenders, but unless you activly siege them, they can also sneak out and get their own shit.
The problem is that CM dosnât have any âResource Gatheringâ which would give a longer term advantage to the siegers. The best we have is intel and Royal plasma, which both have their own problems in this regard.
They dont work in caves lol.
As a hivelord? You rebuild.
FOB function is to win the time for marines to let them recover and come back. Always was.
How long surgery takes?
I mean, same is happening on CM. You canât gather intel, you donât have comms, etc. Intel becoming irrelevant in favor of fucking research that just gets infinite techpoints from xeno corpses is a whole another issue.
Boiler is not too weak. Itâs just not an âi win buttonâ.
The problem with all this is if you give xenos the tools to end FOB sieges that early theyâll just completely wipe the floor with marines and weâll constantly have sub 1 hour rounds as well. I wouldnât say inherently boilers are too weak Iâd say xenos currently donât get enough compensation for having near complete map control by the mid round to be able to reliably push into the FOB. Once again this isnât inherently bad, xenos attritioning over the course of a bad siege is a part of the game but I agree it definitely feels bitter to have full control of the map and both comms only for super stimms to hadn marines a free win.
I honestly think the hive boon system, if buffed or expanded upon is the answer to this. Give xenos some significantly stronger boons (balanced by their temporary nature) focused around breaking into the FOB. if marines can weather that storm then theyâre probably strong enough to push out, if xenos still canât get in itâll probably be time to start thinking about King.
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It should be, if ur not contesting it. Same as a rav should and can walk into a bunch of marines and kill them all if no one shoots.
It isnât, you get the advantage and then nothing happens because youâve no means to break the cades nor does the map control provide any.
5-15 mins depending if planetside.
1+ hours aint it though and weâre talking about longer times.
What do you think causes this issue then if itâs not the boiler/cade balance and metal amounts? I assume you just donât see the issue at all?
thats only low level play, irrelevant much like cm isnt balanced around nevershooters.
The problemâs from coddling marines on defense, since getting pushed to fob does not = losing theyâll happily get pushed to it and camp there. People unwilling to push due to defensive play encouraging is both what causes the 1h stomps and extremely long rounds.
As for sieging tools it doesnât much matter if you buff boiler or give them something else since the end result is the same. Timed stuff doesnât really work because it times out and then what - you have to afk till 2h or whatever the king timer is. People get bored, die and the game devolves into a slog.
Have you watched TI?