Wake up, stuff your face with slop as fast as possible, get your pants on, rush to grab limited gear/land a place in reqline, plunder an emergency medical cabinet for stuff or vend an extra pouch for one thing and dump the rest on the floor, then rush to medical to get unga/custom pills, THEN maybe go to briefing with the squad being given some objective they are completely unprepared for equipment-wise which then gets ignored by most people in the squad. The ASS system tries to make the squads more cohesive and controllable but does absolutely nothing to actually fix the issues.
You should wake up, get your clothes on, eat breakfast, go to briefing and THEN gear up.
Didnât something like this get trialed a while ago? A system where everyone had to go the chow hall first, eat food, talk with each other, and only then they were released to gear up or something?
I think the only issue with this was that it meant Marines spent so long ââââââroleplayingââââââ that it became a detrimental issue to survivors who were guaranteed to have long since died on the planet.
PvE? I donât really want the CO sit with a thumb up their ass for half an hour waiting for a phone call⌠5-10 minutes for CIC to come up with a plan while you eat and rp, 5-10 minutes brief, then you grab your stuff and are on your way - just need to do a little streamlining for the requisitions such as not making people wait in line for attachments
According to the big picture ([CC] The Big Picture), this is coming sooner or later. From what I understand, the idea is to make it so that players can gear up extremely quick (through custom made presets or something) so that there can be more time for roleplay pre-drop.
The only way to solve this is to make a survivor forecons with 7-10 with full gear + a small base that they can call supply drops from req.
Then adding a xeno mechanic that stops forecon survs to push the hive (indestructable weeds/walls on a certain radius of the hive core) + giving them T3s roundstart to attack survs.
Whats the point even of pre-game, in my eyes its the duration for which marines have to make a plan based on the map, for the CO to setup some structure and think out a rough plan of attack.
Xenos spend this time building, or atleast they used to before survs got to the strength level they are at currently (which is just above not a free kill/caps on highpop). Changing the actual time of pre-drop would influence balance a whole lot, probably impractical with bigger changes.
Marines however are pretty free to change, having for example your stuff that isnt fluff items and clothes pre-chosen in character setup in a deployment rack ready to go, throw in some meta ruled cryo stomach thing that forces you to eat slower and you have a full on chow hall, with complete downtime the first say 5-10 minutes.
IMO balancing minor things around availability is pretty cringe and ineffective, give marines full attachments choices on their guns, theres usually just a few AP mags/tad more restricted stuff in the vendors at prep that can easilly be made into pointsbuy for marines in the character setup and a few more points then normal.
Req and more restricted stuff still needs to be introduced in a nice fashion, you could have SLs requisition items directly to them, you could make it like the req console outside of the line, having each SL order up the squads wants and req answering back with whats given.
Everyone gets together and enjoys chow and fucking around completely carefree, SLs order up a few flamers/HPRs/whatever. Req also doesnt have to man a 100 person line at the start of every game, and can just speak with a few SLs instead.
Just ignore those survs theyâre so pouty and completely have a disregard for any other aspect of the game if theyâre complaining about not getting rescued at a certain time or asking for changes on marine to be implemented so those NOOBS dont die. Completely subverts the actual role of survivor if youâre expecting rescue
All I can say is it would be great to finally see marines held to some standard of roleplay. Theyâre not rewarded for doing so and theyâre rarely punished for what amounts to blatant griefing at round start (Doctors should NOT be doing surgeries before first drop!) or really in general. Xenos already donât get to roleplay either much to their own chagrin but thatâs more due to the requirements that they always be building and capping for when the marines arrive.
People say survivors are struggling and frankly I donât see it, I usually see a good portion of the hive killed off quickly nowadays because xenos have gotten so squishy and humans as a whole are too fast, especially unarmored, and at least some of the survivors usually survive to tell the tale. Itâs only a rare circumstance where the survivors spawn basically on top of the hive where I see them killed quickly.
So with all that saidâŚI honestly think marine pre-game being a bit slower and more RP focused would be a good thing.
I honestly wouldnât mind predrop, if half the people there werenât AFK. I can entertain myself pretty well with it, and have had fun with how PvE does it. Getting the same experience with squad leads having to make a plan from the strategies set by the CO/aCO can be fun.
And if people REALLY get salty about survs not surviving, give them a seperate slot (dosnât take up the âactualâ survivor slot) that spawns them in the RP bunker. Then you can atleast sepperate fragging survs, vs RP survs.
The dream pre-game is to wake up at start 00:05 op time and gear up praying that there are attachments leftover, so you do not have to wait 20 minutes in req line. Ideally you will be geared up and sitting in the alamo 3 minutes later 00:08 op time. Ever since they made the ability to draw lines and publish on tacmap, there is no need to attend briefing or even read the XO commands. You simply follow the squiggly lines to your eventual death due to command trying to have marines split push at op start.
I remember when CIC had to announce gyazo links to show orders on tacmap. Not all XOâs did this, so you actually had to pay attention and read what their orders were. If you missed briefing, you either hoped that the XO would summarize the orders given, or that your SL was paying attention.
A bit of streamlining might be nice, especially in regards with requisitions. (Heaven save us all when thereâs no req staff and the XO refuses to send anyone to man the line.)
But otherwise, Iâm totally fine with how marine prep is. There is some range of RP that is possible, and I think that amount if fine. Forcing players into RP scenarios is just going to make them resent it. Emergent RP > forced RP.
And call me crazy, but I enjoy prepping. I can hand curate my loadout depending on my mood. If I want to be a hardcore gamer, I can min-max my weapons and inventory. And if I donât, Iâll grab an MK2 rifle and some ammo, and muck about with my squad or the MPs.
What would be awesome is if we removed the food vendors in marine prep, and have hunger slowdown be nullified for say, exactly 10 minutes. Then, completely rework cooking to allow for easy food mass production and buff the speed of a bunch of MST things. Move the kitchen to the back area of briefing (or even move the cooking facilities to mid deck).
The point of all this is that after 10 minutes (usually about the time most marines who know what they want to load up with are done) and are just bumming around afking at alamo or brief now have some free time and have time to RP getting food and eating it. I think this would be soulful and give some much needed RP interactions for the chef and the marines in general.
Hell, make it so that eating chef made food keeps you fuller for longer or clears hunger quicker.
Yeah, this is a lot of work and completely WYCI, but it would still be sovl.
The maps seem to have a problem with updates wiping previous drawings, thatâs something Iâd like to see fixed.
It would also help immensely if CIC players drew contact points and zones of control on the map, and itâd be helpful if we had some preset markers like ENY, colored boxes, diamonds, X marks, to quickly put down with an option for a timestamp (1305Z - eg 13:05 zulu) and contact updates to the tacmap fading away over 10 minutes so old information doesnât clutter
The tacmap is really underutilized for marines tbh. Nobody in cic ever does the most basic line of contact nor mark defensive lines or fallback locations. Do you know how useful it would be to pull up the tacmap and see a red dashed X or arrow with âSUS RAID 1235Zâ pointing from where the runners/lurkers seem to come from to where theyâre attacking people moving between the front and fob? Or even just the line of contact indicating where the front currently is and a solid line for the main supply route.
