PR 6363 First Drop Protections: Gas and Static Turrets

Development Ideaguys
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I myself have some stuff against this PR and I would love to know how the rest of the community likes it. I will break it down bow.

Remove the gas, Let me explain the USS Almayer is responding to a Destress call. Why are we sending an OB down to the colony before we fucking know what the hell is going down there. I understand you are trying to get survivors to hold the LZ but like if they do not fucking hold the LZ they will almost always die and frankly that is no way to run survivors. From a realistic standpoint Survivor will congregate at a spot that they will get recovered/live, IRL we congregate in an emergency at medical or a high traffic area to be recovered so it is not hard to believe that they will had to the LZ or medical to survive.

Keep the Sentry’s That makes complete since and can fit into the fact of you want a secure LZ.

Link for you people First Drop Protections: Gas and Static Turrets by Drulikar · Pull Request #6363 · cmss13-devs/cmss13 (github.com)

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Especially with some maps practically designed to have holds near or directly on the LZ’s, Kutjevo, Fiorina, Chances, LV-624 (Especially after the much deserved sec storage nerf), New Varadero and Shiva’s.

6/8 maps heavily encouraged LZ holds by putting loot very close to the LZ such as Kutjevo with the now unreachable metal and gear crates, or in LV’s case, where the main hold away from the LZ was removed. Chance’s especially makes no sense on why marines would gas FORECON who they know are waiting down there, and likely going to an LZ who can know there’s a ship in orbit coming to rescue them (because of phone pack).

This PR feels like it was added with no consideration on how it’d impact survivor hold locations, and HEAVILY punishes an already very difficult role. It makes survivor nearly unplayable on certain maps, and would need a major revamp of every map before being tested again, or a major buff to survivors.

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noone really cares about survivors, and i don’t really see a reason why devs should consider such a niche role for balance changes

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From a lore perspective, the concept is that due to rising terrorist or extremist events, it has become standard procedure to fire of multiple C20N-X chemical warheads at multiple possible landing zones so as to disperse possible groundside sabotage teams AND to confuse possible OpFor insurgents as to which landing area the incoming Marine forces will employ.

Is this heavy handed when it is entirely possible the colonists are perfectly fine, and the only issue is a broken transmitter? Yes, but the fact the USCM is being heavy handed with colonists feels very thematic and appropriate for the setting. The Marines will sleep easier knowing there is less risk of a suicide bomber or a xenomorph waiting for them on first landing, and the Colonists will become more restless that their “protectors” are casually throwing chemical weapons at colonies.

From a gameplay perspective, I would argue that the issue is that landing zone holds, which were fairly common, feel bad to play with from the xeno perspective, since the issue herein is that the landing zone is magically protected from weeding so the survivors have a huge buffer zone to skirmish with.

I’d also argue you could now consider mapping it that the landing zones hold decent survivor loot since the LZs will only be open to survivors for the first two minutes of a round.

Really though, the harsh truth is that survivor gameplay is ranked fairly low in priority.

Edit: Another reasoning that I forgot to mention is that this serves as mechanical enforcement over OOC rules enforcement. Xenomorphs are not meant to cap the landing zone and attack the marines as soon as they land, this change now really makes it almost impossible to break this rule. Same reason why I think the turret addition is a great change as it is a further mechanical enforcement additon over a OOC rule enforcement (FOB rushes)

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Thank god survs can’t hold every LZ in the game and has to be a little bit more creative when it comes to holding spots.

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Right As stated I agree with the turret change, but this is not UA territory In LORE we are in TWE territory (I believe). Also, what makes you believe that the USS Almayer has any C20N-X also if we do fucking have any left why are we not using it. second of all, all we know there is a destress call how the fuck do you expect to have CLF on these colony’s that are smart enough to blow up a dropship witch at that point you already have 100+ marines on board. on top of that The Rule you are talking about Steel Was removed. The rule that makes it so Xenos can’t rush LZs were removed. The Gas is unneeded and currently there are no fucking good hold points that will lead to any chance of survival on almost every map. Survivors Need options and frankly having the mindset that survivors Don’t fucking matter is fucking disappointing if you are going to nerf them from the ground remove them from the game. Making it so survivors have no chance to live is bullshit.

They do not have to attack if they feel like they do not have to. Also next point is that survivors are already heavly nerf why are you nerfing them more


Realistically no you do not have 2 minutes. As someone how has over 100 hours as survivor it takes you almost 2 minutes to get all of the information such as, where you are, how many are alive, where you are holding, the important things. Look at FORECON Scout which I love playing it take four minutes to rush and grab the Breaching charge grabbing your bag and armor and running. Which in retro spec is not far from the bag.

As stated before this is a bad mindset you are basically telling a hole group of people that like playing this role that Haha fuck you, we do not care about you and frankly as stated before that is a horrible mindset.

Edit: God I fucking hate the 1 hour cool down

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There is a long, tracked, history of the United America’s being over-zealous when dealing with civilian populations, including with Three-World Empire citizens as the Empire often invites UA forces to help quash rebellions. There is also a on-going in universe issue of UA forces occupying TWE colonies and refusing to abandon them.

We’re talking about a universe where the United America’s outright nuked a capital city on Earth, Canberra, at the invitation of the TWE due to an ongoing rebellion. By that metric, deployment of a few chemical weapon strikes is far less egregious but is also very lore fitting.
(This is all from the actual Aliens lore)

what makes you believe that the USS Almayer has any C20N-X also if we do fucking have any left why are we not using it

We likely used it all just now to blast the landing zones.

I do concur that there are some parts of survivors that could be boosted, maybe they need better pre-established defensive areas, but a weed-free zone always felt egregious.

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I really like this PR, it prevents LZ camping which is really boring and to put it bluntly a little bit exploitive of the mechanics of the game to a extent. Running to an LZ, to set up one cadeline, spam Molotov’s and turn the entire landing zone into fire is not really gameplay I think anyone looks forward to.

There is no way running over to an island in the corner of the map where the water makes it impossible for you to even be approached without being killed is a intented feature of gameplay, nor do I think spamming molotovs around a 5x5 box on the LZ is what anyone wants to do anyways.

There are so many alternatives to holding LZ, all of which are actually far more engaging, and you’d get more kills as well. For what its worth, the whole LZ camping meta is actually relatively new.

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Thats just false though, as there were no real mapping updates/survivor nerfs in the past few years that made holding anything other then LZs bad. LZ holds were just OP as all hell since you have like a 90% chance to get rescued because of how good it is.

Edit: It just feels like taking away surv crutches they have used, which is very kmuch appreciated.

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Great pr makes some maps have kill tunnels and stops lv camping but might want to change the gas time till abit later in the round for loot collection 0:09 to 0:11. ඞ

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Certain maps have definitely had certain holds removed (like the stupid sec storage hold on LV) and the main problem is that survivors have been massively nerfed skills wise across the board. Survivors largely had rely on LZ holds because they are simply too weak now to do anything else to have a realistic chance of surviving. Like how roaming is just suicide 99% of the time, and is completely unviable unless it’s Kutjevo, and even then, a determined hive will still wipe you if you dare to roam, especially since the armour crates in the LZ are cut-off by the gas

Besides, ICly wise, why would survivors not hold near or on an LZ? It’s wherever a ship that could rescue them would land. Of course OOC wise, many maps have very good meta hold locations near the LZ’s (Kutjevo north LZ and the free 300 metal, Fiorina and the comms hold near the survivor camp with all the guns, Shivas’ north LZ with all the bolt action rifles, etc.) and of course, being able to fight xenos off weeds.

This new gas PR kicks the last means that survivors had to actually surviving apart from thermal tarps (and no-one likes hiding for almost half an hour, or being meta’d by ghosts), since most like to actually take part in the round, not just be cool set dressing like they are props in a PVE game.

If survivors got a buff in return for having to hold outside of the LZ, like more loot, slightly more slots, or a buff to their skills, or reworked hold locations on certain maps, or anything really, it wouldn’t be so punishing for an already very difficult role, because even with the LZ holds, the survival chance was nowhere near 90%, and now it’s almost impossible, and feels like a waste of a round.

Also funnily enough it makes the NV bar and island hold even more broken that it already was, because now xenos can’t attack from the LZ and have to go all the way around, which makes it even more of a slog for xenos, to the point most don’t even touch it.

Besides all that, this PR feels like punishing survivors for actually using their brains and going for the obvious hold locations, which many maps strongly encourage via their design, and punishing survivors for just being smart is just completely unfair. Especially since this PR practically only punishes survivors (barring the New Varadero hold of course) as xenos couldn’t even weed the LZ before marines would drop anyways, making it’s supposed purpose of preventing LZ from being weeded redundant!

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I would accept LZ holds if it meant I could weed in it, since those holds are like 90% of the reason why xenoes don’t wanna bother with survs until they hit T3, since it is less fun to attack LZ holds then AFKing. And the only actual counter to LZ holds is drone rushing survs or have the entire hive on them.

It just reminds me too much of sec hold where survs just survive every time.

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There is just as much reason to drop chemical OB on LZ as there is to drop IFF sentries who shoot anyone who isn’t a marine.

Rightfully so survivor is low on dev priority. For a very good reason. Even the slightest change fucks somebody up, it is always marines in the long run, but short term it can go both xenos and marines.

No armor one-shot neuro existed because survivors. Trucks nerfed because survivors. Shit groundside nerfed because survivors.
Every single tool, every single change, anything you do to change survivors fucks xenos, or marines in some way, directly, or indirectly.

From the lore/IRL standpoint it makes a bit of sense, colony goes silent and only sends distress signal, nothing else, no one trying to reach anyone in space, just poof. Suspicious as hell, be it CLF, false-flag UPP, or even xenos.
There is a small problem that it is just gas. Like come on, wear closed air circulation suit and no matter how good that gas is, it is not boiler acid gas, so you are fine sit in LZ waiting for marines. Or rig LZ to explode before you send distress, then they can gas it all they want and you can still blow them up with minimal costs.
UA could just instruct colonists about their practices of gassing LZs, so you are not supposed to stand there.

Among other things, those are reasons why I always said to fuck survivors in terms of balance and gameplay. It is a masochistic role for guys who think they are hot shit, to give xenos something to do for those first 20 minutes, not a legitemate role that has to be entertained and given much attention to have fun. PFCs and xenos are roles that should be treated like that.

You want to know my idea how to make surv gameplay better? Buff roaming in exchange for that PR. But buff it in a smart way that won’t impact marines and won’t fuck up xenos too much.
Make them invisible to xeno thermals. And by that I mean make survivors invisible for xenos trough walls, but only for like first 25-30 minutes of a round.
Then you can emulate Alien: Isolation when playing surv, where hiding, distracting and running away is the name of a game. Add makeshift motion detector, like the one they made in first movie, like out of two proximity sensors and some other crap, one that is super quiet, but has no IFF, so pings at anything.

That would be much cooler and different from either running and gunning around the colony, or just holding one spot.

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You all are pretending like the US doesn’t have an extensive history of deploying toxic chemical gasses into civilian areas. Like ??? “Why would we gas civilians” you tell me!

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It’s a search and rescue operation for a colony gone dark, not vietnam.

They don’t gas the colony in aliens upon first landing, and the same thing applies here because the marines do not know anything apart from a distress beacon was launched several days ago, and contact with the colony has been lost.

Also, most colonies are company/TWE/UA owned or shared, it’s like if the Marshall islands went dark, and the Navy’s first response was to fire chemical shells at the island without doing any recon or anything of the sort.

ALSO ALSO, the USS Almayer is already severely under equipped, considering it only has 2 OB shells (3 if counting the chemical one), so why would they just waste it on a colony, that could have gone dark literally because of a power failure, without even checking if there are any hostiles down there. Wouldn’t they save the chemical OB shell for when they actually know there’s a threat down there? What this PR is doing is literally OBing the FOB before marines land if you think about it from an IC perspective.

It just doesn’t make sense for under-equipped marine ship, to waste one of their three precious remaining OB’s on a colony they don’t even know has any kind of threat on it.

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The PR is fine what what it aims to mechanically solve.

Do shutter system from TGMC if the flavor is so wrong.

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It’s not that the Almayer only has 2 OBs, it’s that a gigachad genius has placed all requisitioning of OBs under strict budget constraints, and thus only allocates 2 OBs initially for the operation.

Imo we shouldn’t really be accounting that hard for lore justifications in this PR given we’ve literally made the Almayer so comically shit to “justify” a canon explanation for gameplay balance. Arguing that firing gas at the LZ is “stupid” is pointless, when you can extrapolate stupidity to almost everything going on in the Almayer. Why the fuck does the CO not have total control over the ship’s requisitioning system? Does a USN captain have to bribe ChatGPT with OPFOR corpses to release extra 5.56x45mm NATO rounds when his sailors run out of bullets?

Given the main grievance is the PR screwing over survivors by depriving them of the few sustainable holds they can use, I think we can just either add better holds, buff survivor skills, or better loot/loadouts to make survivors die about as often as they did pre-PR.
I do not believe we should remove the gas, given well
 it kinda does the job really well. (And very cool)

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Finally I won’t hear another fucking survivor say LZ HOLHD? LZ HOLD!? LETS GO LZ!! CMON MAN LZ!!!

While we’re at that let ghosts metagame locker hiders and bush hiders!!

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i dont blame high command wanting to gas survivors considering the absolute state of their players lol

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To me, this is a massively missed opportunity to put our rail-cannons to use, which are just sitting pretty on the upper deck

Perhaps, instead of a full blown gas strike, the Almayer can fire a volley of explosive (but not tile destructive) shells at the LZ

A railgun strike would be (in-universe) the better option in terms of public perception to the UA. Ideally, the Falcons want to save the day, and come out the victorious heroes they were never destined to be.

Personally, I have yet to read a CC’s report titled

‘Falling Falcons bravely strike civilian refinery with chemical weapons, and suspiciously find no survivors!’

Unlike chemical weapons, a precision railgun strike is (meant to be able to) discriminate targets from non-combatants, and is a clear (and LOUD) warning to the site below, to fuck off from the LZ and put their hands on their heads, while also not being a literal war crime (depending on who you ask).

Marines come off as strong, and commanding, rather than callous.

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