Do you guys think more respawn opportunities for both sides in one round would be a bad thing?
Watching literally 5 minutes of combat between 1 hour intervals during lowpop is pretty depressing.
What if foxtrot riflemen were made much more abundant/frequent and easy to acquire in a short period of time, several times over the course of a round? Maybe just for lowpop to start at least, could be balanced around how many people get wiped at a time, like if half the crew manifest suddenly dies or something idk? And subsequently, buried larva would also get a boost accordingly.
In this way players on both sides would get to play several times in a round even when they perma, as opposed to having to wait for the server to reset just to go through the same limbo again.
If this became a standard thing in the game, endgame mechanics could also be shifted back by 60-90 mins (3 hours for a cm round used to be pretty average not too long ago, I kind of miss it tbh it was more soul). I think the only reason people don’t like longer rounds these days is cause of how long you have to spend dead.
But I feel like this could be fixed if roundflow was changed, and people were provided more abundant opportunities to keep playing in a single game. This would lead to one prolonged war/front/conflict. IDK about y’all but I feel like open battle is what lots of groundside combatants on both sides enjoy the most.
In this way the ratio of time in actual combat to time spent pre-round lobby, pre-drop, fob siege, hijack, post-round (5 mins of “rp”), 5 mins of server resetting, etc. could be altered so there’s actually more groundside combat in a round than there is waiting for combat to start just to die and wait an hour.
schitz sleep deprived rant complete, thoughts?
Ngl I think every marine marine wants respawns but gotta recognize it would throw off balance completely
Constant 3 hour hell rounds cause a marine front being wiped means they would come back even on low pop
Unless I’m tripping this was a direct problem from techwebs when it was first in, no matter what happened command could just keep spamming cryo reinforcements
I mean I feel personally having respawns detracts from the value of a players life in the round. Death having such a high consequence, for me at least, stops me from doing completely stupid things because I want to live. Likewise, it makes it more enjoyable when getting away with something crazy. Maybe that’s a little elite though, it is a game and everyone deserves to have fun, getting knocked out early always sucks.
The key feature of CM is realism, not in the direct sense, but in a cognitive fidelity sense. You, as a marine don’t want to die, so you need to consider your every move carefully. Do I trust command here? Do I trust the guy next to me to cover me? And then, even if you do everything right, there’s still quite a chance that you end up dead and go perma. And you don’t want that because you only have one life.
Adding more respawns means that the stakes are now lower. Why do I listen to command, why do I follow my SLs and move carefully, if I know that if I die it get to respawn easily in X minutes? Why don’t I just go hivedive alone and facetank a ravager? So, this is just going to cut the meaning out of the game and reward the worst players.
Lowpop is real problem though and I keep suggesting that we need to split CM into a few balancing timezones and just balance them separately, until balanced. But that, of course requires someone on the maint team willing to do that and objectively they’re quite overstretched already.
Tgmc solves this issue with “crash” gamemode which isnt usable for CM but i could stand behind making lowpop a separate gamemode with different mechanics to distress signal
something more tdm-y on a smaller map
think Rush from BFBC2
Yes. Adding more respawns just makes the round longer, worsening the issue. See cryorines and technically latejoins when pop switches.
Huggers are pretty much the only decent rejoining feature right now and multiple bursts per marine were okay’ish too, way back.
I’d love for players to have more means to return to a round but as is rounds are already too long often; and I’m very convinced it’s respawn/late join mechanics on both sides that are the largest contributor to the round length. Push has been to gradually give those spectating more to do or have still a means to make a small impact on the game (e.g. lessers and huggers)
I do agree with y’all, you aren’t wrong. I guess my justification for letting marines respawn more was that xenos could also respawn more, figured it would balance out but eh.
Guess it just sucks when the wipe is on lowpoop, it’s much more felt. Yesterday the game ended in the time it took me to get 60 ticks of evo. Queen ovi cooldown hadn’t ended before xenos wiped the entire front, it was literally like 3 mins of combat for a combined 60mins of waiting
Rounds feel very short imo these days, and most of the round is comprised of not-so fun stuff imo (hell sieges, hijack, etc.) more than the actual groundside round. Marines can at least do more stuff predrop, but rounds are even more boring for xenos when you have to wait for 30 mins for a drop and another 15 for marines to get any decent momentum and get a push going
The respawn mechanic is there because xenoes don’t get to live after dying otherwise. Marines get to be “dead” for 7 minutes, and are revivable, while xenoes just up and die until an actual respawn occurs.
If marines got constant respawns, then both the medic role, and just life in general would be treated with disregard like with xenoes (kinda).
Didn’t see this mentioned, but you need to think of weird cultural knock-on effects when changing a game.
For instance, if you can just respawn, there is very little reason to avoid death. Why avoid death when you dying makes the round end quicker so you can play again, or respawn as something else? Why go save your friend when he can just respawn or play again in 30 minutes?
I also think this would have a bad result on RP. Less round length with the same characters means less friends and stories being made. Respawns are a last-resort sorta “please god we just need some more bodies” thing, and I think that’s fine.
Although low-pop does suffer from high-pop agony yet again. Is what it is.
Since xenos have lesser drones and facehuggers, give marines sentient sentry guns on wheels. Slow, can’t reload on its own, can’t drag, can’t speak, basicaly a bald-ish PVT with a pulse rifle.
Solves all of your problems. You still don’t want to die as a marine to play a worse version of a marine in basically every way possible other than that the shell can be revived with few metal plates, cable pieces, welder and some electronics ripped out of whatever garbage fills current colony. Attrition and stuff solved.
Maybe let engineers tinker with them? Giving more armor for even slower speed, or something like that. Promotes RP (sentient sentry can ping and stuff like that) and expands engi kit.
Only if we assume that marine death equals xeno death. One would think that having bigger HP pool, no pain slowdown, no perma damage and free healing is an exchange for not being able to be revived unlike marine.
Would you trade half of each xeno HP pool for xeno defibs? Of course not.
You would act with less reckless as a xeno in such case, even though you get fabled defibs.
That just sounds terrible, unless you somehow nerf the shit out of the DPS it can do. Because the DPS of the average PVT with a pulse rifle, can still kill a T3 in less then a mag (time depends on caste), and you really don’t wanna give marines an “infinite” supply of observer turrets either.
Entirely depends with the recklessness, since we still have a shitload of people just running down xenoes, kill a xeno, die, then get revived. It is essentially the one way marines do 1 hour marine speed runs, which still happen.
Slow moving Pulse rifle with one mag sounds terrible? Then how ~ 100 fast PFC with ability to reload on their own lose 50% of the time?
Sure, you can kill a crusher with one regular pulse rifle mag, you won’t be outrunning it as a sentient sentry, you won’t hit every single bullet and such.
A regular facehugger can cap a regular marine, so what is the problem? And xenos basically get “infinite” supply of them, not to mention lesser UAVs which would be impossible for sentient sentries.
Why marines can’t get slow one-mag pulse rifle turrets on “infinite” supply? The same rules would apply as to lessers and facehuggers, limited ammount at the same time.
Only happens if xenos do not hold the ground where marines runned down others and died.
You can force hardcore trait on everyone and you will still have shitload of people who will do the same.
Even one mag is too much in my opinion. Because for the duration of that entire mag, you have the same DPS as some marine. And imagine this on a FOB siege, where you have like 40 of these sentries since the comtechs, synths, MTs, and even the CE went and just started mass producing them (if we are comparing their “cost” to that of a lesser drone), and now you have 40 guns around the FOB ready to hold it forever until xenoes die of attrition. Or how about just having around 10 of those around the other cave entrences on LV, where you essentially have an infinite amount of comerade sentries, with one guy going around with 3 ammo boxes on his back so he can resupply all of them if you try to push it. It just sounds misserable to play against.
And don’t compare the power of an M41A Mk2 to a hugger. 95% of the time, the hugger needs a xeno to be able to cap a regular marine.
And xenoes can only really hold a point if most marines look out for their safety. If every marine was deathly alturistic, then they would just rush in, kill a xeno, die, and have another marine right behind to contiue the push. The only thing keeping them from not doing so, is that they don’t have a guarantee that the marines will push with him, nor that they will risk their own life to save him.
It litterary goes as most people know. If none of the marines FearRP’d, then it would be a marine major 100% of the time.
There can be at best 3 lesser drones present at the time, from where did you pull out 40 marine equivalents of lesser drones?
Just as I written clearly:
Can xenos do something to increase ammount of lesser drones available at the same time? I don’t know about any.
Seriously, from where you pulled out the idea of being able to mass-produce those sentient sentries? I directly compared them to xeno respawn roles which are regulated. Sure, the limit could be upped from 3 to 6, or something, but come on.
You can’t get regular 10 PFCs do that, but you will 10 sentient sentries? Maybe I failed to mention that those “sentient sentries” are player-controlled, they can get bored all the same.
Also, if you manage to get 10 players coordinated, no matter in what role, their combined strenght has any right to not be a pushover.
Imagine if you could get 10 PFCs around cave entrences on LV, PFCs you can revive with defibs, can tank a few slashes, are very mobile and such.
And a M41A Mk2 on wheels moving slower than marine in heavy armor and with splinted every body part won’t significantly wound anything 95% time, because you can quickly run offscreen.
It happens like every round that isn’t some stupid split-drop and stuff like that. It is called
a “murderball”. And it is not constrained to guarantee of revive. Getting a T3/Queen pick, or hoping for fast round end easly beat the chance to not get revive.
In that case it would be 100% of the time xeno major, because marines would rush gas, Queen before she screeches and things like that.
Nuke/SD already is an environment you can test your theories. It is a new round in few minutes anyway, do all marines just jump into the fray, or most of them evac on DS few seconds before Nuke explodes?
Its tied to pop, and if you want to have the same percentage of “Sentient sentries” as you have lessers, you could also put in huggers, as you litterary compared the sentries to it. And with the limit, you get about 3-4 lessers, and 3-4 huggers on a 20-25 xeno hive, if not more. So when we go to a marine population of 80, you can see where you can get up to 20-30 sentries.
But lets not focus on that number too much, as it can be adjusted and whatever. Lets focus on the big thing about playing a super slow sentry, that can’t even reload itself. First, who would want to play a role where you (most likely) can’t talk, can’t really move with the group, have to rely on someone else so you can do the bare minimum. Sure, in the afformentioned squad of 1 guy, and 10 player sentries, you could essentially create a very slow moving, but deadly front. You could even use this as a flank to get the attention of the xeno front away so that the force of “alive” marines can get an easier time pushing.
And then onto the next problem, on how you would have people NOT want to ghost out of the role, and if the role should even be able to be taken over like a xeno. Because then you can actually just create the turrets around a chokepoint, and whenever it sees action, have people jump into the turret to fight against xenoes, then ghost out of the turrets when the xenoes eventually run away.
Dosn’t matter too much, as xenoes frequently die on a FOB siege (as an example), where most marines don’t move farther then the cade they are hugging. This also makes them prime vanguard duty, where they could just hang out in the back of the marine squad and be their safety net for engies to build cades around.
Hell, thinking about it, they would be perfect to guard medics as well, or engies cading up the backlines. Anything that is either a static, or almost static when it comes to positioning.
You could also just see them as a litteral sentry turret we have now, as they would do similar DPS to most of the castes (not to highly armoured ones).
Yes, and the murderball falls appart when all the frontlining, suicidal PFCs die off, and where the “coward” (I’d say around 70-80% of the marines) are the only ones left. If the rest of the marines acted the same as the ones spearheading it (as realistic as "perfected communism), then it would be a 100% winrate for marines.
It’s actually the worst, funily enough. Becuase that is when 90% of the marine force is just “coward” marines who just want to live the round. You don’t see people rushing out of evac when its open, since they wanna hold it and survive. They care about their characters life and don’t wanna suicide charge when they can do something else which they think is funner.
Yep, it was a pointless discussion just to have something to nitpick.
You are not forced. Who wants to play a hugger constrained to weeds, defenceless, super low HP, no means of damage, banking on other xenos trying to disarm marines, or clueless marines overall?
Who wants to play a super weak drone that can’t really build anything reliably, has little to no HP, deals little to no damage etc?
You want to get back to playing on marine side, but you permaed and there is no foxtrot reinforcements in sight, or you simply wasn’t choosed? Get the sentient sentry, maybe share a chat radio channel with other sentient sentries similarly to a maintenance drone in vanilla SS13.
Not much different from your regular bravo marine who is ordered to guard something. Being slow discourages roaming around, if you aren’t in a mood of guarding something, simply don’t choose to play as sentient sentry.
If not for ghost UAV unintended feature, nobody would play lesser drone.
Is that a problem, how? You can test this out for 10 rounds and then conclude. Or you can just say it is a problem and dismiss it just like that.
Who said that sentient sentries could be just created like medbots and ghosts would just inhabit them? That is not something huggers, or lessers can. Who said you can make 10 empty sentient sentries and put them somewhere so that ghost can grab them whenever there is some action?
The truth is that whole concept of a sentient sentry for marines has a lot of potential, is fun and makes sense in universe. There are easy solutions to all of your listed problems. 40 sentries too much? Who said there could be 40 sentries? 10 empty sentries up to grabs? Who said there could be 10 empty sentries? One regular ammo pulse rifle mag too much damage? Who said you can hit all 40 bullets?
No it would not. Sometimes it is not worth to be suicidal.
It proves that they are not banking on revives, since the next round will happen faster than revive would.
With the hugger, you play it mostly so you can cheat in larva queue. With drone, you can do whatever you really want (as a drone), while not being constrained to have other sisters help you do the bare minimum. Both are also pretty fast, and basicly the flash in comparison to the sentry you came up with.
This sounds sweet, but you choose to ignore the balancing issue of it. For one, marines aren’t really supposed to have an “infinite” source of anything that isn’t slow as shit to accomplish (look REQ budget and CAS). They are supposed to be the attrition faction that has to use up their resources to fight the resourceless faction. So now the turret either has to be very few in number and shittier then a marine, or vast in number, and that vast number be shittier then one marine. We are also comparing this to the lesser drone, which is at best like 1/3rd of a T1. So it has to have as little round impact as that.
So if you wanna go ahead and just give ghosts a respawnable and “relativly” easy to make turret on wheels, that has the same DPS as the normal rifleman, then its gonna be absolute shit. Since now its not a 1/3rd of a T1 we are talking about, but just robo PVT that is slow.
I am trying to figure out what you mean by what little you gave me. All you gave me was:
I then compared it numberwise to the one we have already (the lesser drone), and got numbers from there.
Also, how in the hell do they make sense in universe? I have yet to hear about “casual” sentience outside of working joe’s, but they are not a combat role, and every combat role for artifical intelligence is essentially banned under geneva conventions or whatever we have. Like, the one thing we deviete on when it comes to the aliens universe, is the xenomorph evolution, and the strength of them (PvE fixes this albeit). So now creating something completely new and out of source seems pretty iffy.
Then solve them. I am here having to go by the scraps you give me, and give you the problems it has if it was implemented today with the Lesser drone as a standard. It is not my job to just agree with whatever you say, and solve them for you, but for you to actually give me some numbers back that COULD be seen and looked at.
BUT. In any case, from what the maints have stated, they don’t WANT an observer job for marines, and the only one they thought about adding, was the WJ, albeit under strick WL.
In the one gap where theres boiler gas, sure. Any time else? Don’t think so. Unless you wanna camp cave entrences for Nuke or something similar i guess.
Why not? I think they should have near “infinite” source of basic healing stuff and regular ammo.
There is no cap on latejoiners, so here you go.
That is the idea, ghost role has to be shittier than a regular version, otherwise people would avoid bread and butter to go for them, thus defeating their purpose.
T1 is worth atleast two marines, if not three. Then 1/3 of a T1 would be about one regular marine.
But no, we don’t want something with full power of a regular marine, because ghost role is not supposed to do that.
I do not think so. But hey, you know that this could be changed too? It does not neccessairly have a pulse-rifle built in, but M4RA, or something akin. I might ignore “balance issues”, but you straight up can’t wrap your head around even the most basic concept as that.
It is like when friends ask you out for a pizza, then you start debating that you do not like pizza, it is unhealthy, expensive, etc, instead of proposing to go out for another kind of food.
Why you did that? The idea is barebones and basic so it can be finetunned. When I said “sentient sentry with pulse rifle” doesn’t mean it has to be concrete pulse rifle, or bust. I did not mean the exact numbers like lessers and huggers, but scaled to marines. That is your imagination going to look for problems while being unable to find solutions for them, while those solutions are easy, simple and basic.
“Sentient sentry”, the " symbol, you get what it means? Working Joe is already an inexpensive form of AI know for decades in Alien universe. That is why I proposed such sentries to not speak at all and only beep, for them to be even more basic. A small robot with speech recognition feature, being able to understand verbal commands, essentialy a pinging (otherwise mute) alexa on wheels with a gun. Something possible right now. USCM already has sentry guns that can make decision to shoot at something without human input, so they should be OK with that too. Lorewise there would actually be no sentience as there is none in Working Joes, “sentient sentry” is a description for the concept, since obviously player in control of it gives it sentience.
No speech, slow, weak, no ability to interact with anything other than shooting means it needs no special rules. WJ, or regular Synths require WL because they have a lot of additional rulings, responsabilities and additional power that would be too much otherwise.
“Sentient sentry” would suffer nothing of sorts.
Give me actual problems that can’t be easly fixed by a value change. OH NO IMAGINE 40 SENTRIES, THIS PROBLEM IS BIG AND NEEDS SOLUTION! WHAT? AROUND 4 SENTRIES MAX AT ANY GIVEN TIME? PROBLEM SOLVED, HOW DID YOU DO THAT?
If I introduce to you the concept of spork, which is fork combined with a spoon, will you present me with a problem of it getting stuck in asshole when it is put in there? The obvious solution to this problem is sticking it only in the other end of the alimentary canal.
So If I introduce to you the concept of ghost role marine sentry, don’t come up with issue of having 40 sentries at the same time, because you “thought” it has to be 1:1 implemeted today when compared to lesser drone.
Lets play a fun little game. Came up with some idea, some addition to CM, whatever, gun, xeno caste, or marine armor. I will do the same things you did to the idea of sentient sentry ghost role.
