Heya!
So I’ll get straight to the point and say that ERTs probably shouldn’t be able to cancel hijack.
Right now what happens quite often is that hostile ERTs will rush CIC to start cancelling the lifeboats evacuation. And really often it just turns into a spam contest between the CO/XO and the ERT, where the side that spams the longest wins.
I think its kinda bad for the game since it doesnt really add anything to hijack besides spam announcements about evac and marines never being able to evac unless some xenos kill whoever is in CIC.
Now I do get that in theory it can lead to some tense situations that would foster RP. Like a hostile ERT making demands to reactivate the evacuation. But in practice I’ve actually never seen it turn out this way.
So I do have some suggestions on possible changes, and I will give the disclaimer that I’m terribad at coding so I dont know how feasible these would be.
The first option is the most simple. Just dont allow ERTs to have access to the CIC consoles since they dont have command IDs. It already is pretty strange that a random CLF farmer or some WY goon would have access to all the Almayer’s systems without hitting some sort of security wall.
The disadvantage to this method would be that ERTs wouldnt be able to make announcements or call for additional distress beacons, and I do think that those are good/fun things.
The other option in my mind would be some sort of code that is needed to authorize/cancel evacuation that can be found in the little code book that the is in the COs room. (Or something else that is similar would also work I guess). I think this would probably be the best option since it lets command basically have a monopoly on handling evac stuff under normal circumstances. But it also opens up avenues for the book to be forgotten by a lousy CO or stolen by an ERT that manages to kill the CO, meaning that there are some rare situations where a hostile ERT could still cancel the evacuation. (But they would at least need to put in a little effort to do it)
This method would have the disadvantage of the code needing to be randomized, and I dont know how doable that would be code wise. And it would also require some messing around with the evacuation code. (I dont know if its some ancient code that is really hard to change)
Anyways thanks for reading my suggestion! I think it would be a good addition to the game and if I wasn’t absolutely terrible/incapable at writing code I’d probably PR it myself. So here is hoping that some gracious maintainer or contributor picks it up!
Wait, so what do you propose hostile ERT’s to do, once they land? Since a single squad can not survive against the xeno’s example being the CLF ( very weak ).
Happy to see this being supported by Morrow, I concur that ERTs being able to cancel evac ruins a lot of stories and end of round events for the Marines. It also presents a massive disincentive for CIC to call an ERT if they know there is a good chance their evac will be cancelled.
@Pablo_Excavator this change would not prevent hostile ERTs from still storming CIC and using it to (try) and call for more reinforcements. UPP are still going to UPP and hostile Mercs will still steal whatever is valuable.
Another hugbox solution. Let’s remove negative experience! The point of hostile ERT is that they can fuck marines over. And cancellation of evacuation is a part of it. Marines have some ways to prevent it — guard CiC, blow up consoles or just don’t risk it and don’t call ERT. ERT cancelling evac adds to hijack if anything. I’ve seen marines trying to negotiate with ERT so ERT would let marines go, I’ve seen groups of marines trying to reach CiC and kill ERT so their brothers can escape, and even if marines die because they cannot evac it’s still a story. Yeah, maybe not every case includes heavy roleplay, but at the very least there is a possibility. Removing this in favor of yet another ten minutes long lifeboat hold is ridiculous. You really want to remove variety and player control from the game, just because you cannot cope with losing. I am extremely disappointed by the fact morrow agrees with this.
What usually happens is the hostile ERT bum rushes CIC, immediately cancels evac and then start shitposting an announcement taunting the Marines. The marines are eventually wiped as all the xenos are attacking them, then once the marines are dead the hostile ERT are all killed, or evacuate on their own craft.
Opportunities for negotiation are almost non-existent as the means to do so are almost impossible to acquire during the average hijack.
Then make something that encourages negotiation more, instead of outright removing the very possibility of roleplay situation like negotiation. Yesterday I saw a hostile freelancer ERT member demanded the code from CO’s safe. CO was already dead by this point, but still I was quite impressed by the situation. And you just want to take it away because it not always leads to something interesting. With the same logic you can outright remove hijack, because not every hijack something interesting happens. Not every round something interesting happens as well. But we’re still playing, right? Because there is a chance something cool and memorable is going to happen. And we need more possibilities and opportunities, not less. Simple as. Not to mention UPP taunting marines while they are horribly dying is a better roleplay situation than nothing.
Since there is a timer, I will elaborate even further. A lot of people hate hijack sequence simply because it’s very repetitive and way more repetitive than it used to be (before addition of larva surge and sd removal). It’s the same lifeboats hold every round. It’s the same question: will marines hold for mere ten minutes or not? Hostile ERT at least spice things up, now marines have their backs to the wall, there is no escape, it’s do or die. I fail to see why would anyone want to remove it. Losing is fun. Yesterday in that situation I mentioned earlier marines managed to kill queen during their last stand. Still they all died. But it was extremely cool, dchat was screaming «marine major» just because how badass it was. You really need to understand what harm you are going to make with suggestion like this. We already lost too many cool opportunities during hijack sequence, please, don’t take away another one.
“Boohoo my femstatic died, remove hostile ERT.” That is honestly what all i hear from this. If you dont want hostile ERTs to cancel your evac then you should just shut off the CIC APC, 90% of CM players dont know how to fix APCs.
I think adding a phone on the lifeboat will help with this.
Resorting to petty insults to advance your position is unwarranted and makes you look like a fool.
At any rate I’ve advocated my position that I feel cancelling evac is a net negative for evac gameplay. Most opportunities for interactive human roleplay tend to end once the Marines evacuate from the operations zone as the finale is mostly wrapping up the game, ergo cancelling evac tends to elongate the round.
Holding the game hostage for the 1 in 100 rounds where there “might” be some roleplay between a hostile ERT and the Marines feels unfair for the remaining times where the ERT will just bumrush CIC to cancel evac before hurling slurs at the Marines.
As of this moment, the only good ERT’s are the W-Y response teams. As they have an objective (members have basically given this to themselves over time without be forced to) to secure the CL and move to their office. As a result they do the most legwork on the ship and don’t just sit around with their thumbs up their arses waiting for the marines to die.
Frankly I fail to see why the UPP, raiders, and CLF would even want to stop the USCM from evacuating without an IC reason. They should want them to bugger off so that they can take over the ship. As of now it merely comes across as meta tomfoolery.
A potential compromise could be to only allow the leader of whichever ERT is called to be able to cancel the evac so that it is not as prevalent and may actually be done for a logical reason.
I get this and like I said in my initial suggestion in theory cancelling evac would have some potential for RP, but in practice it basically never leads to fun RP situations.
I was actually part of the freelancer ERT that you mentioned and IMO it does make like zero sense for the freelancers to just disable evac. After disabling it someone made the announcement about the safe codes but the motivation for disabling the evacuation was just “We’re a hostile ERT so we’re gonna cancel evac.” I even ended up calling ICly how dumb it was to try and keep a ship full of hostile military personnel around while we are looting the ship. And the CO being dead was kind of a relief I’ll be honest.
That is because I was around the next round and there there was also a hostile ERT, CLF in this case. And what happened there was what usually happens with hostile ERTs cancelling evac, namely: “Evacuation has been canceled” “Woop woop All personnel must evacuate immediately” “Evacuation has been canceled” “Woop woop All personnel must evacuate imme—” “Evacuation has been canceled” Ad infinitum. Basically the spam of that stuff doesn’t really add anything, and is both annoying and ruins some of the “epicness” of a lifeboats hold. And this is basically what always ends up happening with ERTs cancelling the evacuation.
And yeah I do agree with your desire of wanting to give opportunities for RP instead of taking them away, thats exactly why I gave the second option in my suggestion since it would replace the whole system with something that is hopefully not only immersive but can also add some opportunities for RP. And I do hope that @Morrow will consider when the long list finally gets to this topic. (Or some other contributor/maintainer that might pick it up).
Also I’m also just gonna say this, and don’t confuse this as staff action or anything like that since its just my personal opinion.
If you’re gonna come into a thread to make a strawman just so you can insult someone else while also entirely missing the point, then please just go do something productive with your day instead and don’t clog up an ideasguys thread.
It kind of make sense that hostile ERT’s would turn of the evacuation. It’s so marines will die and be bait for the hostile team while they do their thing.
This will benfit teams like freelancers (hostile) giving them more time to clear out the ship.
Teams like CLF + UPP will give them some help with the xenomorphs while they crawl up behind the lines and destroy the hive core. Which will help marines to clear up the xeno’s and then the CLF+UPP act as a third party to wipe marines. Which I didn’t see happen but is possible.
Whenever I see UPP cancel the evac, they sit in CIC and make little effort to attack the xenos, or complete an objective. They mostly start smack talking Marines in announcements.
It’s the times when ERT’s don’t cancel evac that you see them doing the most fighting.
Agree. The shit talking instead of fighting is useless. Back up your claims with a gun you commie pigs. If not Clarion is correct. It devolves to a clown show that is very annoying.
However, I can see the other side of the argument. I think both sides have good ideas on this. If we could find the so called Golden Mean we should be aces.
What if we add actual goals to ERTs? Right now it’s just “do what you want” (which is not bad on its own) so no wonder they want to do most meaningful thing they can aka rush CiC and cancel evac. Maybe if they had actual goals (again, getting something from CO’s safe does sound like a goal, there might be something of value) it would look better. Retrieve something, save someone, kill someone etc.
And I agree, we definitely need to add phones on the lifeboats.
Just destroy the CIC. Blow up the APC, throw HEDPs at the consoles so that the ERT can’t use it. There’s IC justification to do so and it’s more soulful to scuttle the ship if you’re already evacuating imo.
or add CIC self detonation, when both lifeboats are activating AND ERT is called, as to remove USMC hardware/equipment/documents there which they don’t want falling into hostile hands
This is still an on-going issue. Anyone claiming that roleplay can be extracted from hostile ERT’s cancelling evac is patently wrong, every single time I have seen this the hostile ERT just mindlessly cancel evac and start shitposting announcements in a LRP manner.
The meta is to deconstruct the CIC APC when sending a distress to avoid this scenario, because the alternative is the CIC is forgetful, they call evac, then they lose evac cause they didn’d decon the APC.
Even the staff have claimed its not-metagaming to decon the CIC APC due to this issue.