something i’ve always been bothered by, as someone who hyperfocuses on recovering the dead; is that there is a lot of regular behavior by CIC players that is either the result of ignorance, conformity or inexperience that could easily be remedied and increase Marine Survival rates, especially squad leaders.
Rapid and Frequent changing of Squad Leader to random people to satisfy having a living aSL. ( WHEN THE SL IS NOT PERMA, AND NEEDS HELP)
I once experienced someone who changed the SL every single time I fell over, not even dead but fallen over; to what point?
My biggest issue with this is theres often 30 reasons why you SHOULDNT swap it from a dead SL and the most important being that you are essentially ensuring they are less likely to be rescued and more likely to perma because the giant arrow pointing to them is now on a random guy fighting who will more then likely say nothing and just do exactly as they were doing before; putting john rifleman or a random FTL on SL when you could be actively saving the SL’s life using coordination and the tools you have
Squad Announce “ HEAD TO SL TRACKER, SL DOWN GO RESCUE “ or dial FTL’s and get them to gather faces; I dont know how many times I’ve died as SL or seen people die as SL all because command stopped acknowledging their existences once they go down.
The instant orders of “FALLBACK” when Marines are suffering losses without clarifications provided.
We all know marines struggle or refuse to fallback, a big reason for this is tunnel vision or main character syndrome; when you’re ordering them to fallback you should be providing clarifications of the situation “ 9x XENOS, T3’s PUSHING EAST, 9 DOWN ON THE ROAD TO FOB, FALLBACK AND PREPARE TO RECOVER WOUNDED “ is alot more informative and strategic then “FALLBACK FALLBACK!!! FALLBACK!!” or “ FIGHT THEM IN THE OPEN! “ alot of people ignore command announcements for the large part are assuming tactical competency ( that they know what to do and what the situation is) CIC’s role needs to bridge the tactical efforts of marines with their strategic oversight; short term vs long term and big picture vs moments.
these two things right now are huge sore thumbs in a decent amount of rounds and CIC’s whereby panic and strategic/tactical disconnects happen and marines suffer exaggerated casualties that could EASILY be avoided by communication & teamwork.
It is very noticeable when you have a CIC that pays attention to their individual wounded, getting callouts “ 50 NE FROM SL DOWNED MARINE “ are the types of messages I am FOCUSED on reacting to as much as possible.
and nothing crazy is required to do this, infact in the first case less overreaction is needed on part of CIC to stop cycling random people as aSL, half the time the only orders you see spammed on screen are “ GET TO SL “ with little else said as to why or what, overly simplified communications are easier to spam but are actively harming rounds and commands interests due to the lack of details.
I agree. At least to the first point, I think the second is just a lack of understanding from CIC about what kinds of things marines ACTUALLY respond to.
Listen, I won’t say the best tactic to get marines to go where you want is to lie and say the queen is there, but it DOES work for a reason. Tactical individuals recognize and respond to the threat; TactiCOOL individuals recognize and respond to the Opportunity to Get A Sick Frag for Their Montage. It’s a win-win. Being descriptive about big High-Value targets is good.
To the first part: yes it would totally slap late joining FTLs, but I think SL shouldn’t be able to be reassigned until SL proper is permanently dead. And if you start a round with no SL, the aSL should be assigned and fixed the same way/until a real SL joins. Worst case is you chose wrong and get a silent SG, who coincidentally would operate about the same as 70% of actual SLs…
At least CIC would learn fast who’s worth assigning aSL and who needs to be left to do their own thing
The amount of times I have an SO scream at me '“SL DOWN SAVE SL GET SL!!! SL PERMAING!!!” and then they also still reassigned aSL to someone else is…often…
Strong agree on the point of switching the SL tracker prematurely. In my experience the dial provides a critical visual cue for when a proactive SO or XO calls “SL Down to X position. Recover them!” with a quick acting marine(s) this can serve as a fulcrum for aggressive plays, the kind that result in not only the recovery of the SL + Any fellow marines around them but also multiple xeno kills or at the very least breaking the momentum of the xeno push.
I think of it like that incident where a Roman commander threw the Legion’s standard into the enemy ranks to encourage the men to fight harder and break a stalemate. Often SLs are known and likeable characters that people will take greater risks to save and that’s before we get into tactical/strategic reasons you want the dead recovered.
if Im back on the alamyer getting surgery or something sure no worries, if I’m stuck in FOB for 10 minutes sure 100% swap me
but I go down from my first injuries in the first 10 mins and Im being healed….be patient,…breathe; dont touch the assign aSL button lol
like genuinely, if the SL is down then theres more reason to want people to go cover the medics or to know where contact was just previously ( and to wait until the 1 guy who is actively listening to orders gets back up to continue relaying them )
but when you SWAP aSL you should either as you say KNOW the faces or ASK FOR VOLOUNTEERS; if you ask you’re more likely to get someone to take the role seriously in the time theyre needed to fulfill it and by accepting or volunteering you know theyre paying attention!!!
like look at how recoverable I was here but i was swapped off SL and treated like I was perma
I get it but also SOs take like 15 minutes even to switch it back once the SL returns; plus I get juked out all the time that my actual SL is with me when they’re not.
Im sorry Super Lcpl Rifleman Godfred Fraggerton, I don’t think I want to follow you into the dark 2 tile wide choke…
As SL the most annoying thing is when I get aSL re-assigned from me when there is even a faint hint that I will be going down, or if I’m just heading for a short trip down to the resupply point then returning to the front.
As a big CIC gamer here, this mostly comes down to needing a change in mindset when it comes to CIC players (and by extension those who player officer positions). The mindset needs to change to “How can I serve others” rather than “How can others serve me” along with general entitlement. This looking down mentality on the lower enlisted ranks only goes to harm the marines overall. Many CIC players have shit tier callouts like “FALL BACK” “QUEEN!” which is weakly justified by “erm umm Marines are unga brained and need simple commands”.
A better alternative would be to shift the mindset from Marines being mindless apes to expecting more out of them to raise the overall standards of marines to contribute to a better atmosphere and operational success
Ngl most marine players are oblivious and lack gamesense since not everyone is a CM addict with thousands of hours. I’ve seen more ops fail from marines being stupid even with good CIC, compared to marines being good with bad CIC (good marines vs average xenos steamroll the hive on their own).
People like to blame CIC a lot but frankly speaking, in the majority of cases it’s groundside’s responsibility to rally and fallback/move in. A lot of times when encirclements happen, no one even attempts to lead a breakthrough even with CIC orders.
IMHO, expecting marines to get ‘better’ is a futile undertaking. The combat skill levels of marines and xenomorphs have stayed relatively consistent for the past decade, you simply don’t ‘train’ the entire playerbase to get better outside of forcing tutorials on people. People can complain about stupid marines all they want, but the solution isn’t to ‘make them better’ (impossible and impractical), the solution is to change your orders and such to accomodate them. That, or just play CIC when there’s good aSL/SL players online so you can force them to actually lead their squads competently
I think the assignment of an SL is a tool often used to designate OPFOR center of gravity, wherever they are massing/concentrating their forces. I’ve also seen it used to recover SLs and enable recoveries. The problem often is that the CIC player has to identify those opportunities correctly and execute on them in a timely manner, which is difficult to do unless you spend a lot of time in that role, which is also difficult to do as it can be often stressful, complex and generally demanding.
Essentially, and as a few here have pointed out, it comes down to inexperience. And unfortunately the atmosphere of CM precludes training outside of guides/video tutorials, which are no substitutes for experience.
I think you can roll the dice and hope a post here helps change the culture of force organization, or you can lead by example and work to improve the behaviors of the people immediately around you in those rounds. If you get good data from those experiences, it’s a more constructive post. For instance, CIC not doing something competent versus CIC doing something deliberately incompetent as a result of community culture.
I think in most cases you’ll find that people don’t start rounds hoping to sabotage the team and that they mean well, it’s just that their grasp on a particularly complex game, or the examples they’ve learned to follow haven’t fully and adequately prepared them for difficult roles.
I believe a proper solution would be to incentivize players towards wanting to save their SL or FTL and discourage ungaballing as the most optimal strategy. A problem with command roles is that robustos avoid them like the plague since it turns them into paper pushers and pulls them away from doing what they enjoy (fragging). These are the most experienced players that should end up leading squads but still roll rifleman if they dont get spec for the reason stated above.
To mitigate that SLs and FTLs should get weapons training that gives them better accuracy or faster shotgun reload (or something similiar) when not in proximity with other SLs. For example Alpha FTL gets half the bonus when near one SL and 100% of it when not near any other SL or FTL. When near more than one SL or FTL you get no bonus.
SLs themselves should always have the 100% bonus until CO and XOs are near then they get 50% decrease but never lose it all of it.
This way you get players to want to keep you alive, robustos get a more powerful mob to frag with, it discourages grouping up with other squads and encourages fireteams to go on secondary objectives while having a strong leader that can support them. And as other stated above SLs and FTLs should not be able to be re-asigned if they are dead until they perma.
Their orders such as move, attack, hold could probably use the same mentality of discouraging ungaballing but im not certain how to change that. Honestly i dont know if that would be enough or good but do believe it will provide in-game incentive for marines to care a little more about their leads and for experienced players to pick them up more often.
Tactical individuals recognize and respond to the threat; TactiCOOL individuals recognize and respond to the Opportunity to Get A Sick Frag for Their Montage. It’s a win-win. Being descriptive about big High-Value targets is good.
