We’re having pretty decent amount of stalemate long rounds that last 3 hours. And usually it is always the same thing:
Marines retreat to FOB - xenos retreat to bait them outside the FOB - repeat until marines get overrun/xenos die suiciding on FOB.
And we are having situations like this:
And this stalemate gameplay is always the same! I suggest making at least somehow a bit different and allow the dead poor souls to join back the round and wait for this hell to end.
Calling for a Foxtrot squad is not enough, it’s not changing the situation, just making the stalemate keep going. We used to have DEFCON(and techwebs tested) that actually could have ended such cursed rounds, but they’re gone(i think because of lag issue or something like that)
Chem ERT doesn’t affect the round majorly, it’s just 8 guys who pick up chems and go back on the ERT station to do nothing(sometimes they deploy, but their amount doesn’t change anything)
I suggest adding automated events that trigger after the certain time passes/(like 2-3 hours, whatever you think will be enough)/or the certain conditions are fulfilied(ghosts amount, something like that not sure)
Example of events:
Hive receives AA boiler that can destroy the Almayer forcing the marines to literally live on the ground with all the crew. This will make marines not available to get the infinite resources from the Almayer and mobilize the entire crew against the xenos to finally end round.
Marines receive nuke just like in the old times that must be deployed on the ground to be activated and exploded to kill everything planetside.
These 2 are the most vanilla events, but to add more drama and much different gameplay I suggest adding something like that:
A UPP ship arrives to the Distress Beacon as well(because not only the Almayer could receive it) and the ship vs ship battle starts. But since the ship vs ship is not implemented(it’s very raw from what I seen) I offer spawning in the regular UPP ERTs(make the amount of soldiers more, depends on ghosts amount)
If the attackers fail to capture the ship the UPP ship retreats from the sector(or gets destroyed by Almayer) Or the UPPs could deploy groundside far from the marines and hives, this could be both as a threat to xenomorphs and marines.
A CLF cell was hiding on planet and now is ready to participate in the fight.
A CLF squad or squads(depends on ghosts) spawn near the border of the map and must fight for their survival both from marines and hive.
Maybe could be made same as with UPP variant that a ship arrives, but CLF ships are mostly poorly equipped and I think logically better them to spawn in colony(dunno how this will work on Fiorina, probably just disabled).
Weyland Yutani vessel finds out that their laboratories and valuable (classified?)research is getting destroyed/discovered by the marines and they send in the PMCs/small whiteout squad(like 4-5 combat synths) in order to retrieve secret documents/stop the marines from the chaos/capture the speficic xenomorph?
In my opinion there could be many interactions with marines, maybe they will even ally with them to fight the monsters that threat everything alive.
Some more:
A group of abominations appear on the planet(5~)(don’t know should they be with a regular hive or be part of another hive) Predators may openly ally with the marines forces to destroy their most hated targets that dishonor their race(don’t blame me for the pred lore, I just watched predator, AVP movies and games)
The predator’s council demands more intensive hunting and force the predators to go hog wild(basically like in AVP 2010 game) (but this is too much I think, but something maybe could made for it)
I propose it because we are having too much stalemate rounds that aren’t different from anothers. By adding at least 1 of this event the gameplay will majorly change and tons of unique and interesting situations could be created, as well as letting the ghosts actually play the game and not wait for the round end that is not so close.
nuke is already an option often granted by admins when the round hits the 3 to 4 hour mark.
whiteout commandos are called as such because they aren’t sent for retrieval- they’re sent because Wey-Yu has determined the situation dangerous to their interests enough that they want to make sure that it never sees the light of day publicly, and they are literally geared towards going in and destroying and killing everything in their path. 5 whiteout commandos could wipe an entire hive or marine force
CLF cell might be a neat idea but i guarantee the majority of the time they’ll just go and murder half the marine force, plus their gear is garbage and definitely not well suited to fighting xenos
a UPP force hostile to both sides would also just sign the death warrant of any marine forces, UPP already have better armor than marines and their weapons are essentially better geared for HvH
five abominations is also game changing, and predators given an open ticket to do whatever they want to kill them would just cause utter round chaos.
personally i’m jaded because i come from a time where there used to be 5 to 8 hour rounds (which were cancer) and don’t really mind the three to four hour long stalemates, but that’s just me and i’m biased. otherwise, further brainstorming might be needed on this avenue, i don’t disagree that having 2 to 3 stalemate rounds in a row can be extremely taxing, but some of these proposals are pretty goofy
It should be automated and the nuke is not giving ghosts chance to enjoy the end(except observing of course, but not many people like to just observe) And to be honest, it is often used when it’s already not needed(when xenos are breaching inside of the fob or marines doing the last guaranteed push)
That is exactly the point of this thing, to be game changing and break the eternal stalemate.
The main point of such scenarios is to give ghosts something interesting to do. And by letting them back in round it MUST BE GAME CHANGING
Also another example of stalemate round that we had yesterday
Just look at the amount of ghosts that just sit idle(half of them quit the game)! Good that we had funny preds that caused chaos and TDome spawns.
But still, it’s ridiculous amount of ghosts compared to alive players.
We are having 110~ players that are observed by at least 100 ghosts.
If you want a real solution to the three hour rounds just give the marines the ability to say “Okay we give up, lets get out of here.” And let them leave the ground and end the round, give the Xenos their win and let the marines spend some time shipside unwinding from the loss like five or ten minutes and then end it. Automating the time when the round ends takes away a lot of the experiences that people can have and can even ruin an in round narrative, it should be up to staffs discretion if we wont just give marines the ability to say we are done fighting. The best solution without that is honestly the nuke otherwise, it forces one side to win if they could win rather than drawing things out.
I remember when rounds used to be longer and three hours was the average and like @DukeofCagliostro said if you die and don’t want to wait you can do something else or leave the game tabbed until the round ends, nobody is forcing you to sit there bored waiting.
To add on to this. I think that past the 2hr-ish mark (subject to testing), every X amount of minutes a wave of Larva and Cryorines spawn. This allows the dead to rejoin the game in their faction of choice.
Ship vs Ship event stuff is implemented currently as event only, as only the Almayer can receive damage and there is no consequence to the Almayer hitting 0 hull HP
PMCs coming in is a bit bbbbboooring, WO is straight up a no go at all (Combat Synths are illegal in universe, the facilities planetside don’t have anything important enough to deploy a war crime to secure it.
Though the CLF cell stuff sounds interesting! They’re there as a third party to just cause disruption to the two sides and that is coolbeans.
Planned withdraws would be really cool +1, make it dependent of faxes perhaps request authorization to leave orbit due to the situation being untenable.
