RO vs QM / TGMC Req vs CM Req

General Discussion
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FACT: With only 30-40 players on TGMC, there will ALWAYS be an RO (Requisitions Officer).

FACT: With 130+ players on CM, there is still often enough NOT a QM.

Why? That’s what this thread is about.

My first thought is that shipside roles often tickle a kind of time&info-management 'tism, the same that makes me love GP. I think RO might hit that spot better than QM.

How? Two things come to mind for me:

1.) FACTORY BUILDING. The RO can invest their own SKILL and EFFORT to get a huge discount on operational items.
EXAMPLE: The RO can buy mortar shells for a huge markup OR they can build a series of conveyor belts & machines to produce them much cheaper. Very often they’re producing like, AP rounds as well, they realize they could share machines, so then they build a Factorio setup for max efficiency.

2.) Supply drops. The RO has much better supply drop capability than the QM just by virtue of how supply drops work on TGMC vs CM.

The second one is not viable for CM. TGMC is just more arcadey, the insane logistical capes present on TGMC wouldn’t mesh well with CM. And I think Thwomper wants to ditch supply drops anyway – not a bad idea if we enable CTs to make supply runs to/from the front.

The first one IS viable for CM, or at least something like it. It’s emergent gameplay. That Factorio 'tism rules and people love it. ROs love showing off their complex factory setups and improving their efficiency.

This is less an ideas guy thread though and more a discussion on why RO is always filled but CM can hardly scrape any CTs/QMs

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From what I saw of the “Big Picture” update coming soon™ there will be a lot more ways for req to get stuff to the frontlines; like setting up an actual supplychain from Almayer to the frontlines.

I think that’d make playing req a lot more fun than “deal with attachment rush roundstart then throw shit into crates and beg CIC to send it down or just do it yourself”. As it currently stands I agree that req is kinda boring and there’s really not anything else you can do besides raid preps for free ammo (which access I think got removed for CTs so go fuck yourself) and use the ASRS black market kit to try and find some good items just to get raided by the feds 5 minutes later.

I would love to make spaghetti lines in req, like in factorio. Hell, the bottom layer of the Almayer already has conveyor lines, why can’t we just go down there and use them as req? Maybe it’ll tie into OTs making more custom ammo or something, idk. Still I agree, req needs to be more fun.

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I like CM and TGMC for different reasons as much as I hate both for different reasons.

Req on TGMC was definitely something that I hated on most days.

My experience playing shipside was much as it was here: Often there was no RO and someone else would have to play Dr. Fill. Very often it came down to the Captain (there were rarely any SO players in my day 2 years ago), but sometimes even the CMO would be left alone shipside to have to run Medical and Req (FC can give Req access). Not terribly difficult mind you, since surgery was completely irrelevant except for Larva Removals because of the Cryo Tubes, but a lot to manage on a bad day.

TGMC’s roster of weapon includes (with only a little exaggeration) 50 different weapons in the regular line, with 30 different calibers, with 0 magazine interchangeability. The robust ungas carry their ammo cases with them as the front moves disk to disk, the unrobust ones scream at the RO to send them ammo, hurling any number of obscenities for the less savory characters (of which if you are unlucky there will be multiple).

That’s not even going into the inflated, redundant, and overlapping profiles of the different artillery pieces.

And if marines don’t fulton/ASRS corpses, researchers aren’t doing bounties, or setting up miners you get to spend the entire round telling people there’s nothing you can do: Because there is nothing you can do. There is no mechanic to save you from unrobust marines. If they don’t frag, mine, or do research bounties planetside you are a glorified bluespace ammo bag.

I will say, in the moments where you aren’t running around with your head cut off slinging crates, that Req is infinitely more entertaining than it is here because there is an Overwatch Terminal inside of Req that can be used to watch the marines fight. You don’t spend all round staring at the same 4 grey walls. You get to react with “Real” to everyone else seeing someone take an HE rocket to the back of the head.

Weapon/ammo/magazine redundancy isn’t as bad on CM. The breadth of knowledge needed to adequately supply the war effort is smaller, even if it has its own pitfalls sometimes with how things are named. Still takes some knowing to execute on it effectively which can be a real trick.

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Bring back RO to CM. All will be well.

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Yea i think i filled in as ro as so for a 4 hour round and it broke and crushed my spirit so badly that i never went ro proper

As an aside, most rounds, most people who did factories were either the secret lowkey chill dude MTs that knew everything but were skinwalking, or in the case of SG factory, i built my own factory as SG before deploying. Most rounds it went like “Hello RO i would like 2 extra ammo boxes” (they throw a wrench at me) “set up your factory if you ever want a refill” and i sobbed while dragging factory pieces around which then otbers would see and go “oh and can you make a rocket factory attached and a…and a…and a…”

What im saying is that it will just become secret esoteric lowkey chill dude skinwalking MT knowledge here, i think that was my main point. Ive had a long day and a mojito was involved.

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This makes it sound like the easiest way to get more people to play req is to just do as you said and add a TV/overwatch console. Sounds like an 80/20 fix to me. 80% of the problem solved with 20% of the effort.

Gonna add this to my list of good ideas.

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I think another big part of the reason why req is underplayed is that there is very little skill expression. A good researcher can make a huge difference, a good CIC player can make a huge difference, even a good doctor/CMO can make a huge difference with the rare hugger surge. But as QM, its very easy to hit the base line of having fob and frontline crates ready when they are needed; once you hit this easy point there is almost nothing to do to further optimize or help the round that is within req itself. The most useful thing you can do is start helping on OW or moving corpses to research/patients to surgery.

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Quartermaster able to work towards being fifth spec easy solution right

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All this tells me is that we will save CM by adding an OW console to req

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truly nothing can save req because req’s job content is boring. the overwatch terminal is a bandaid on a sucking chest wound of gameplay.

to solve this i propose we change req into a rogue-lite where the cargo techs and the QM must descend down the ASRS pit to do battle against PvE AI, traps, and the occasional ghost spawn fireteam. defeat sends them back up the req elevator with all injuries persisting (including death)

as they complete each layer they can delve ever deeper for more and more dangerous levels to acquire further rarer and more powerful gear.

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Ruin has come to our department. You remember our venerable Cargo Bay, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch in the middle of the Almayer?

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this would be cool but it’s basically like adding lavaland to req, and if you’ve heard anything about lavaland from classic ss13 servers is that they’ve been wanting to remove it for 5+ years
CM maintainers follow the same philosphy that leads to SS13 maints hating lavaland so I don’t think this will be approved

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I played all my rounds in that ancient, rumor shadowed department, fattened by restricted weapons and spec ammo, and yet I began to tire of…conventional weaponry. Singular, unsettling tales suggested the ASRS itself was the gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. With screwdriver and modified tuner, I bent every effort towards the purchase and distribution of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our budget on…CLF crates and…PMC shipments. At last, the cobweb covered elevator beneath the lowest Z-level, we unearthed that damnable shipment of unbalanced equipment. Our every step unsettled the Investigation Team, but we were in a realm of slop and dogshit. In the end, I alone fled, LOOCing and malding through those blackened hallways of antiquity. Until I went into paincrit.

You remember our venerable Cargo Bay, opulent and imperial. It is abysmal dogshit! I beg you, return to CM13, roll req and deliver our department from the griefing clutches… (shotgun blast, cracking sound, armor light fizzling out)

Of the Military Police.

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Can we have a Lavaland map?

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I’ve got your Lavaland right here:

  1. No supply drops.
  2. Back-mounted cargo crate ala Death Stranding.
  3. In lieu of supply drops, the QM paradrops a cargo tech at random points on the map.
  4. The cargo tech must now find the front line and deliver their much-needed supplies

I promise you 1000000% this would make cargo an attractive job. It’s similar to the risk/reward gameplay that makes Intelligence Officer so fun

Addendum 1: If you want to keep the gameplay of calling supply drop coords – The random drop could be completely random if there’s no coords, if there’s coords then it drops the cargo tech nearby but not exactly on them

Addendum 2: The flavor reasoning is that the supply drop targeting system is busted and the pods require a human to manually adjust navigation — we already know in-universe that maintaining datalinks is difficult from orbit, it’s why we have fucking radio-telephones instead of Space iPhones

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I think it would make sense for a marine transport and landing ship to be able to produce most of its supplies from raw materials, especially when it’s patrolling alone in the outer rim. Maybe even tie this in with the colony by utilizing their mines to send refined materials shipside and get ammo in return (not all maps would support this function so this idea probably won’t go anywhere unfortunately)

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TGMC already does this

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req in its current form wouldn’t even be that bad if was redeeming in even the slightest amount

but rather you get John SGT getting yelled at by the 500 PVTs that all want their metagame loadouts, then the other 2 hours spent being yelled at by the specs for ammo anyways

removing supply drops/forcing a supply line wont make CT fun, when CT itself isn’t even fun to play, bottom line

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Youre probably right efzapa – I don’t understand why the entire game has to be gated behind a window line

like just give each squad a limit amount of the usual round start attachies/special weapons/etc and let SLs hand them out in their prep from a special vendor

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add stock market and blockchain so i have something to do

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