Perhaps one way to balance Sentry weapons is that they become permanently emplaced when deployed.
Or, setting up and deconstructing a sentry becomes a multi-step action, so you can not deploy a sentry on an active frontline in seconds and then withdraw it.
Same can go with repairing it, making the act of repairing a sentry gun take longer. Such that you can’t out heal damage.
Personally, I think miniscopes should be un-fogged, and automatically attached to every rifle when they are dispensed.
Then things would feel a lot better to play IMO.
It’s just binoc combat that is janky and strange… not scope combat.
I could concede in letting mini-scopes work but that you can’t fire the rifle while scoped.
Stupid? Maybe. But I don’t want to turn the game into one where everyone is slowly advancing with their scoped rifle and shooting off-screen people.
I’ve played on combat servers that allow it (that WW2 server for example) and it is exceedingly boring when both sides do that.
Hate to continue an argument that maybe you won’t be convinced of, but, w/ Escalation and Lebensraum (what you’re referring to), scope combat fucking sucks and is unfun because just 1 rifle round is gonna send you into paincrit in <30 seconds, at which point your heart is liable to stop. 3 rifle rounds will fucking instantly kill you. The time to kill is insanely low.
CM’s time to kill is much higher, just based on friendly fire. W/ my permaban I haven’t been afforded the opportunity to play HvH, but that’s my input.
It’s less the scopes and more then fact that all off screen damage is being removed. It completely destroys the feel of being in a larger firefight when you never actually see any bullets that aren’t coming from someone directly on your screen.
I don’t like it, the off screen damage has never been a big issue in HvH and the offscreen blind engagements shooting around corners wildly in the direction of incoming fire were a huge amount of firefights - and the most survivable ones too. I really genuinely think it’s a mistake to get rid of that and reduce everything to on screen fights only.
I don’t know what HvH events you played. If that is the case, then for the next HvH event with normal off-screen damage pack SMG, or shotgun with slugs instead of a pulse rifle or M4A.
Then tell me how well you were fragging the opposite team.
My experience is two-three UPP AP bullets from off-screen breaking my arm.
I don’t think you understand, I am not talking about the amount of damage you take per bullet, I am talking about both the atmosphere of firefights and the lack of precision, so you get hit by 1 stray bullet aimed vaguely at you and not 10 direct shots from 6 tiles square.
In 80% of HvH fights I’ve seen, 2-4 people stumble into each other, start shooting, then both sides immediately back off and keep shooting from out of line of sight, trying to to reposition, heal, and re-engage from different directions - generally spending most of their combat time not in direct contact but jockeying around and taking potshots.
When you get into fights that aren’t like that it becomes almost suicidal. I think if you find HvH is too lethal the worst thing you can possibly do is restrict damage to only on-screen, because the off-screen damage is almost never killing you unless you were already dead, but stay in someone’s actual sight for 5 seconds and you’re gone. You take enough damage to go down at 15 tiles? You are probably getting recovered quickly and healed back up or revived, because nobody can provide enough accurate fire to prevent that. But at 5 tiles? You’re done.
Getting rid of off-screen damage is an all around bad idea to me because of this - it’s the genuine playable meat of HvH, not the unwanted side portion. I like the offscreen fire blasting stuff around me, I like seeing there’s a firefight going on somewhere without having to see people on my screen, I like having shootouts at 15-20 tiles with people I can’t see where I’ll hit them once or twice and they’ll hit me once or twice and it’s not an instant game over, we both end up taking a breather and recovering. I love seeing 10 people all shooting at each other spraying in the general direction of the enemy and not knowing for sure if you’re hitting anything but having to duck into cover now and then as someone hoses your general direction down with an HPR or whatever. It’s FUN.
I cannot fathom why so many people think the best way to play HvH is to restrict engagement to only what you can see. I really think this is completely backwards and will take the most fun parts of the firefights out of the game mode entirely.
I’ve had quite a few players approach me and state they find the weapon changes are far more enjoyable than previously for HvH.
Either you possess a great level of foresight. Or you stand alone with disliking the changes.
It would be fairly easy to revert the change in the future if needs be.
I think HvH becoming on screen is a great change.
I’m not really sure why you think the atmosphere of HvH has changed so dramatically by making off-screen bullets less accurate.
In my experience, people literally won’t stop shooting off screen, and I see my character fucking matrix-dodging 10 bullets, before getting hit by one just as I make it to cover. Now that? That’s atmospheric.
You mention you like the feeling of extended firefights, I still feel like that’s true. On-screen combat hasn’t been buffed. It’s been nerfed. Overall, you are less accurate with firearms on-screen both with AP and normal ammo. The majority of firefights involved me skirmishing with people, both of us getting wounded and then recovering. That’s the same as the off-screen potshots you mentioned, except this time I can see the whites of that bastard’s eyeballs and call them various slurs.
In the past, on-screen combat was an extremely lethal affair. You’d likely die within one second, due to the super-accurate rifles. I think this change has made firefights more prolonged and energetic, since you can actively see your foes reposition and retreat, rather than just holding LMB at offscreen apparitions.
If your main concern is that you don’t feel like firefights are big anymore, I don’t think that’s the case. People still blindfire constantly, and SGs (who are annoying turds, but I look forward to seeing HvH with frontline mode SGs, who will be unironically good due to being the sole source of accurate long range AP fire) suppress UPP fairly well.
Overall, I think the atmosphere of HvH has been preserved, while making combat itself much more enjoyable. It’s a brutal, sluggish war of attrition where dozens die over a single block in frantic CQC combat. I think that’s great.
It is not restricted to only on-screen, you can still shoot offscreen and if a guy doesn’t take cover, he will eventually get hit and he will die, so he is forced to seek cover. Off-screen is more of a suppression than direct fire and that is fine in my book.
What fun you have when you shoot at offscreen targets and you don’t even know if you killed, or atleast hit them? The only indication is that they stop shooting, which might mean they retreated, are reloading, went into cover, or died.
Is there fun in not knowing if you are doing anything? Why OTs are/were famous for making maxcap pre-drop and then cryoing? So they could ghost and see what they did in action.
The same with everything and every game. There is no fun if you don’t know if what you do accomplishes anyting.
How is lowered accuracy preventing this situation from happening? It can still happen, it is just less effective. You can still have 10 people shooting all at each other spraying in the general direction and not being sure if they actually hit anything, or just waste bullets.
If anything, it makes those situation longer, so longer F U N means better F U N, is it not?
It is not getting rid, it is nerfing it significantly.
The rest just assume I agree with Basil and Steel.
Missing SG’s shot at five tiles, ten shots to take an UPP soldier to half health, infinite numbers and i am not even going to cite the power of their specialists and weaponry.
I understand the idea of trying to make HVH fun, i tried to help with feeback here in this same Discussion, in game and even on the discord. But i don’t think it will ever be balanced for both sides.
No matter how much we kept killing the UPP there was always 10 more to hold their FOB, not even counting the Synth surplus.
Requisitions is nothing compared to what they are getting, everything-wise.
I wish the best of luck for the future developments for the Faction Clash mode, but i fear i share the sentiment of most USCM players, it is not fun to face a better prepared, stronger and numberous enemy. 
I said it in OOC and I’ll say it again here. Steelpoint, I beg you Please design a consistant way of having marines paradrop or something. This event starts at about 6:40 AM in my country and I didn’t had luck so far at guessing when it will begin precisely.
So I end up latejoining and by the time I join Alamo is holding because the mix of lowpop and the tempo of HvH skirmishes yields impredictable as fuck fights that scares the soul out of CIC. So I arrive at hangar just to see that Alamo is ordered to hold and I have no way of going down, I hear that the solar devils are drop-podding and I get a sense of hope just to remember that they were never able to counter a FOB siege. Then evac happens and I wasn’t able to shoot a single commie. This thing happened twice and I know damn well it will keep happening, so please, I know it’s not a modest request, I know that it is a whole-ass feature that only god knows how it should be implemented precisely. But PLEASE give marines a way to deploy during FOB sieges.
I’m sure its been noted, noticed, or otherwise already mentioned.
But I would ask that the LZ designs are made equally with directions of approach in mind. The NV UPP LZ had 4 massive sprawling open walls including one that existed directly adjacent to the landing pad which marines flanked hard through. If the UPP didn’t have a lot of late joining players it would have already been over at like 10 min into the round because of that.
Compared to the last HVH where the UPP barely managed to hold onto their FOB because it only had 2 angles of approach.
I saw some people complaining about the TTK for SGs and I’m not really sure what they’re talking about. I died very fast to them and they seemed accurate enough. Having effectively 4 extra specs seems like something that might need consideration too.
I am planning to revise the UPP landing zone situation for next New Vara to ensure only at least two main approaches are available.
These events are a great pleasure to play, thank you all for the hard work that has gone into making this game mode so much more!
This is based on the HvH event on NV (round 25106) along with HvH prior events:
UPP SLs could only buy health HUDs which they are no longer trained to use. They had no way to buy an optic, meaning you had to ask your squad to buy you one
The UPP req attachment vendor places attachies at your feet rather than the desk
The UPP FOB in the center of the map felt like it had too many openings to defend with their reduced numbers compared to the USCM . Already addressed
The UPP FOB was all underground this made it very hard to send supplies via req drops because they had to land outside of FOB cades
The UPP rations are worse than USCM MREs. It would be nice if you could “eat” a UPP ration more times or if you got more nutrition per bite
I personally really enjoy the roleplay before the deployemnt starts, I think it would be nice if the dropship’s fueling time was extended by five more minutes (while still having the ceasefire) to allow for more flavorful briefs and squad activities
I hate to sound like a, “nuh huh akcthually” but, I will state that numbers wise the UPP and USCM were fairly even, and in-fact the UPP were slightly outnumbered to start with. The UPP were on the verge of losing if not for the late-join arrival and the UPP synths frantically recovering the dead and reviving them.
The issue of weapon accuracy is a on-going balance issue, but we are addressing it slowly.
I am planning a total revision of the UPP Landing Zone, I’m going to place it at the Crashed Predator ship, and re-do the whole area mapping wise, this should make things better.
All great feedback. Some of these issues we are already addressing (SL gets basic medi visor, future fix for UPP req, FOB change)
I will, next time, extend deployment timer to 20 minutes from 15, while keeping the 5 minute ceasefire timer.
any feedback to UPP tacmap, I did not get to play so did it wokr?
eh both sides will get cas eventuly but what you describe is not issue only for USCM but UPP too right now
Here’s my NV round feedback:
Specs in this game mode are needed for both sides. Both for actual game impact and immersion. In terms of game impact the UPP gets RPGs, which obviously are decent in doing accurate explosive damage both to players and to structures, serving as good utility tools. I don’t think I need to mention the satisfaction of a good rocket hit. And if you ask me I would like it a lot to wield one of those things into battle. However that is not happening at this time with the marines. Due to the specs being designed for HvX, they were removed and replaced with an overly armoured marine with nothing more going for them. While being able to survive a rocket blast point blank with half health is nice, there’s no utility or uniqueness beyond that. Ironically there’s nothing special about this specialist.
Large parts of the map are 3 width hallways, often with obstacles in the middle such as wooden cades and boxes blocking your way. These corridors have few doors and little cover, and where this is not the case like security, the place is extremely narrow with small rooms separated by multiple rows of windows and doors making repositioning harder and tedious. That along with the many obstacles that eat my rounds constrain me and my opponent greatly in terms of actually doing anything substantial with our rifles. I think maps with layouts that allow both cover and manoeuvre, like solaris and hybrisa are more suited for HvH.
Close combat has become dull and uninteresting due to the accuracy nerfs in close range. Aside from SGs being literal peashooters, close fights had their stakes significantly reduced since you need to use up more time and ammo to actually kill someone. Locking eyes with an enemy, shooting 15 rounds onto each other of which maybe 4 hit, then retreating to heal and repeat has gotten repetitive. The only way to avoid this as the UPP is to have a shotgun and approach within 4 tiles before ending the enemy with semi automatic really damaging close fire. Or you can be a specialist and walk up to someone with an RPG to blast them to oblivion. Marines on the other hand have no real edge they can utilize in that scenario. The rifles can’t seem to hit accurately most of the time, the shotgun is worse due to it’s pump action system taking ages and their explosives are only grenades, of which are not that different than the UPP (arguably worse since the frag they get is essentially an M15 equivalent and there isn’t many of those). I miss it when walking up to someone had consequences that were decided in those few seconds of the engagement. I liked it more when closing in was more of a commitment rather than a routine. The risk of dying on that engagement made it more fun and interesting. Flanks actually had an impact and the game felt more energetic and rewarding.
