How to end/prevent 3+ hour hell FOB sieges

General Discussion
102

I personally think that engineering should both be nerfed AND buffed.

Hear me out, ok.

What if the available marine resources of engineering material, specifically metal, gets 2x’d or even 3x in Engi point buy (2 points instead of 5 for 10 metal), metal becomes something that comes a lot in free ASRS req crates, and is reduced in price by 2x when buyable (which is all easy to do since its only value changes) BUT, health for ALL variants of metal AND plasteel is reduced by 2x, and tailstab does 1.5x damage of slash to cades. Also buff construction pouch to give 4 spots instead of 3.

What does this do for those who do not understand how engineering works? Yes, SURE, this will give FOB more materials HOWEVER; there is a FINITE amount of space that engineers have to work with.

Skip what im about to type if you get why this is a nerf overall to FOB’s and a buff to the actual COMBAT technician part of your kit (aka building mini FOB’s at front to stop flanks / give medics a place to work):

Barricades have to be optimally built to accomadate WW1 firing line tactics of enough space to matter, but not too much so that you waste all your metal. Barricades have to be manned as well, so the more cade lines you make, the less human coverage you have. And even if you have the human coverage to cover all cadelines, now cades individually are weaker by 2x so they are very fast to melt down with focused hit and runs, especially with tailstab (an ability all but Vamp Lurker has) doing 1.5x of slash to a barricade.

This means that FOB’s will have more lines and are bigger, BUT, they are more vulnerable to focused hive flanks because the lines are weaker overall and will have less people holding each line since you have to cover multiple angles. Unless marines FOB camp the MOMENT they land, chinks in the FOB will be easier to focus.

Engineering explanation over.

TL;DR? This will force marines to keep the momentum with CT’s constantly using their now enormous amounts of roundstart metal to keep patching flanks and pushing as camping a 8 line FOB isn’t viable if you lose the front push.

Keep in mind this is spitballing but I am trying to account for the fact that if you make FOB weaker without compensating marines, you further enforce a helldive mentality; push into hive at all costs without stopping and lose or win in the first 10 mins, creating sub-50 min games with most of it being prep.

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103

Marines are born to die, marines want the hell dives.

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104

I’m sorry if I’m being rude, but if I were a dev here concerned about balancing FOB sieges, and then I saw this thread…

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105

Just tell chatgpt to give you a summary

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106

Sieging sucks for ambush castes, but that’s fine because you know what, not ever bloody caste needs to be able to everything.

I Still think it was a shit decision to give wall slashing to pretty much everyone and that we should revert engineering back to like 2016, no one complained about sieges then, and most importantly Building was actually fun for the engineer,

Unlike nowadays where engineering is constantly changed by people that have no bloody idea about the role “Oh let’s just constantly adjust metal amounts”, Sure because building bloody cades is a enjoyable experience /s.

107

Isn’t it? I love building cades :frowning_with_open_mouth:

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108

Screenshot_20241031-100656_ChatGPT
Screenshot_20241031-100656_ChatGPT1080×2280 274 KB

Ta daa

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109

Sorry but tablefort era engineering with all its gimmicks will never come back.

I know what era you came from and I miss it too, but no one wants it back except engineering mains since it caused too much salt on both sides.

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110

Holy shit you actually got the entire conversation here onto the AI? Poor, poor ChatGPT…

100,000 words of pure salt…

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111

The year is 2025, DOR has finally managed to get Harry to merge 5 PRs nerfing Mortar, Cades, REQ, marine DPS and sentries. Every round the Queen metarushes the weak spot of FOB and break it open at 00:40, 3 minutes into it and we’re on hijack. It’s done. This is absolute cinema. This is the new, perfect, CM.

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112

How dare you use TLDR and then summarise literally nothing

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113

Oh god, I didn’t think it’s possible, but you’ve managed to make me, of all people, want to defend DOR.

Like, for all his faults, if let unchecked DOR, would actually balance the game. That balance would be mostly incomprehensible to anyone but DOR, but it would be a balance.

But what’s actually keeps happening is that every time DOR tries to nerf anything on the marine side, like nine million people jump in to stop him. But, when he nerfs anything xeno-related, very much the same people would jump in to support him, on the “suffer and cope xenomains” basis. So DOR is only a real threat to the xeno faction. As an example, see his sentinel rework and the reaction to him trying to buff it now.

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114

Your problem.

I don’t know where you are getting this from, but you’re completely wrong. No one wants DOR to touch anything.

Yeah, let’s forget he made dragon’s breath completely useless literally a week ago.

People will say I’m a “hater” and that I’m being toxic but the truth is that I speak what most people think. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that any of his long walls of text here mean anything, it doesn’t, it’s gibberish.

The only true fix to the issue would be a major rework of both parties, not ONLY nerfing marine side FOB. Let’s not forget how overtuned trapper boiler is, how overtuned a good hiverlord is, and how often it’s becoming that Queens will literally disable slash until marines are on the kill chokes. It’s hive siege which turns into a FOB siege.

It’s not something a few PRs would fix, it’s something that would take maintainers to do. In my honest opinion this entire topic is a joke. Maints know that FOB sieges suck, they don’t need to be reminded.

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115

Good. It was broken, someone had to do something.

I mean FOB in fact has been only buffed in the recent months. It seems fair to nerf it somewhat to bring it closer to balanced state. Ideally every PR must be thought-out and carefully evaluated. But when maints add plasteel cades (as an example) just because why not, well, you shouldn’t expect a nerf to have a better reasoning.

The word “his” is not needed in this sentence.

If DOR has a million defenders I am one of the million, if DOR has 5 defenders I am one of them, if DOR has one defender I am him, If DOR has no defenders I no longer exist, if the whole world is against DOR I’m against the whole world

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116

Truer word’s were never spoken, IF I could code(or had time to give a toss about learning to) I’d been heavily nerfing both sides around about now.

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117

Major reworks in CM have a bit of a stinky reputation, because there is a tradition of them being left unfinished and leaving the game in a half-broken state. So, no, please, it can be done in a smart way without any major reworks.

See, you agree with the idea that both parties need tweaks to break what I call the toxic feedback loop, but you’re sort of trying to add the additional demand that “but lets really nerf xenos first, before ever touching marines”. But the problem is that the list of things to nerf about xenos would just keep growing and people would go “no, xenos aren’t nerfed enough to touch marines yet”. You remove the things that people are complaining about currently and people would find other things. Then it’s gonna be stuff like someone literally rushing alone through the entire map into six xenos, then going “how the hell is oppressor, warrior and ravager are so OP, I’m robust, I should have completely wrecked em all”. Yes, I’ve seen this take many times.

While I just think that it’s best to sort of do small tweaks to both sides until balanced. Of course some stuff would need huge tweaks(nuke, stims), but you want to keep it small, if possible.

As for the xeno castes you think are overtuned:

  • There’s a bit of a parardox about the trapper boiler. When xenos complain about the FOB siege, it’s always “just get 4 trappers”. And then almost the next sentence the very same people would go “remove the trapper, broken OP caste”, without ever noticing the irony.
  • Hivelord, apart from the resin whisperer shenangians or other cheap tricks is pretty weak. I have a masochistic tendency to go hivelord on Trijent and spend 15 minutes building the excav system, then watch how marines destroy it with CAS in 2. Not even talking about OBs. After the Queen deovies and you lose her pheros, the hivelord plasma demand vs gain is so low, that it would take you ages to rebuild what marines destroy almost instantly. I need to test it, but I think a single PFC can reliably destroy the hivelord walls with a bayonet way faster that it can build them. Not saying that hivelord building should be better, but where’s "overtuned " here?

P.S. Also, if we’re talking about overtuned xeno castes and DOR, why aren’t we talking about the base Ravagers and how they’re still not in the right place. That caste is my traditional nemesis. I’m mid as a marine at best, but I have literally years of experience fighting them and I’m still struggling to kill them often enough with all the changes. If even I’m struggling so much, I can’t even think what experience the newer people are having with them…

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118

DOR literally nerfed base rav. Hard counter to base rav is to be in a group of less than three people, base rav is nothing without empowerment bonuses.

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119

Knew you were gonna say that. But he nerfed it in exactly the bad CM balancing tradition of lowering the killing power, but keeping the survivability.

Remember DOR saying that Queen screech must be nerfed into oblivion because if all of the xenos were perfect players, they’d win 100% every time anyway? That’s sort of the same thing with Ravs and marines. Yes, if as a SL I’d always be closely followed by three more people who know how to shoot, the Ravs would stand no chance. But in practice, marines are pretty terrible with their firing lines and if lets say 10 marines fighting 2 Ravs, on average only like 2 marines gonna be shooting and if the others are not outright blocking the firing lines(while not shooting), it’s already a decent showing. So, unfortunately, you have to work with what you have and balance around the more-or-less typical marine performance and not hypothetical perfect world scenarios.

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120

No? That’s straight up wrong.

You could get up to 400 (!) shield from 5 targets, now you need 6 for only 300.

Initial shield is 50 instead of 75, basically there is no point to not instantly empower (hit empower twice).

CDR was reduced (so you need more slashes to regain dash), stun from dash was lowered.

You can’t say that rav kept survivability when it was only nerfed (I would say it was overnerfed, even).

Don’t spread lies about my friend DOR or you gonna have a talk with me, understood?

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121

Again, I’m not saying that he didn’t nerf survivability, but I’m saying he didn’t nerf it enough, but also nerfed the dash skill shot, which is exactly what nerfing the killing power is. One a more general note, I still believe that base Rav is another one of those bad designs too, which cannot really be balanced well and are either gonna be OP or crap(see lurker or M2C). Wish someone would redesign it completely.

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