Good work, soldier! You spawned-in, spent 25 minutes gearing up and getting ready to drop, before getting lost and captured by the forty-minute mark. Unless you want to play Xenomorph (I hope they’re focusing on captures!), then the next time you get to play is dependent on a Joe or Predator whitelist, or the round ending soon.
Don’t worry though, what if you had a chance to respawn? To get another shot at taking-down the Xenomorph menace? Of making a real difference in the battle? Would you take it? Good, but you’re not getting a gun.
Allow ghosts to respawn as Civilian, Medical, Engineering, Requisition, Security, Transport, and Command roles.
The fact of the matter is that these departments aren’t often filled as much as we may wish they were. Why would you play one of them when you could go for the far more exciting groundside role? The fact of the matter is that groundside marines die often, and are often stuck without much recourse for playing again. I think that the lack of an endless wave of marines is good for the game, and I wouldn’t want to change that for a moment. However, I believe that all that time spent bitching in d-chat is time wasted that could otherwise be spent putting mats in crates for the FOB.
At present, you can respawn as
- Predators, whose intention is to provide roleplay opportunities and spice to rounds.
- Working Joes, who help clean the ship up and say funny lines.
- Facehuggers, who can only assist the hive in growing their numbers, and cannot kill any potential captures or impact the marine’s defense.
With that in mind, I see no reason why more support roles can’t be opened up. All of the above with the slight exception of some officers deploying to “lead from the front” are strongly discouraged and scrutinized from joining in combat, so it won’t have a direct HvX impact on the round. Instead, it will provide the opportunity to maintain critical support as the round moves on and player investment thins. To a degree, it may even provide some sympathy!
- Respawn as the Cargo technician who could have packed the materials that saved your FOB.
- Respawn as the Doctor who can treat the survivors of that OB that gibbed you.
- Respawn as the PO who could have extracted you when you were hugged faster than autopilot could have.
- Respawn as an Ordinance Technician and make the bomb that turns the tide of the battle!
In the best case scenario, marines are able to beat-out cryo-decay of players disinterestingly leaving the round and support shriveling while there is less of a reliance on those sacrificial players to take the boring, less glorious jobs to keep the war-machine running. In the worst case: Ghost simply get to fuck-off and roleplay as shipside roles instead of complaining.