The role of equipment scarcity in CM

General Discussion
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With bobby working on an experiment to make the pre-round ‘chow time’ more impactful, and introduce more pre-drop RP, I kept being hit with the thought of, basically, “well most of the players I know rush squad prep/req so their guns aren’t shit”, and how, effectively, any attempt to make the predrop time have more RP would need to remove the incentives to speedrun to squadprep/req/medline.

With that in mind, what are the incentives to speedrun to these things?

  • Some people just want to get geared up as fast as possible so they can take a leak/afk until the game starts, no amount of ‘nudging’ towards RP will fix this.
  • Many people do not want to have to play the game without their weapons having the right attachments, magharn being the biggest example of this.
  • People may have a build in mind that uses a certain niche weapon, often times req has <10 of these to pass around >100 marines, and so they want to guarantee they get to play with the weapon they want
  • Being fast gives you access to items that otherwise may be unobtainable, or cost a lot of prep points that could go towards items that are otherwise unable to be obtained-- e.g. “I ran to grab one of the 2 binocs from my squad prep, so that way I have enough points for a medhud that I have no other route to obtain!” – There are a lot of items like this.
  • Medics have to contend with the medline, and the (probably unskilled) doctors manning it, between doctor skill and the power system, the earlier you get there, the less likely you are to spend all your time waiting in a line. (I fairly often miss first drop as an HM due to medline, and that’s just asking for IA and FE!)
  • Speedrunning can give you access to items that you just otherwise can’t get. Large mag/shotty shell pouches, autoinjector pouches, Mk1s, are very scarce in req and are a pretty hefty boost in capability, combined with the critically low amount this is a strong incentive to rush to req as fast as possible.

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There are other reasons, but this is a pretty good overview.

The overarching ‘theme’ of this list is scarcity. When you have items that are scarce, and distributed first-come, first-serve, there will always be an incentive to “race” for them.

Scarcity is a pretty big part of the design for the game, if every marine could vend as many AP mags as they wanted, it’d throw the balance around a lot, but equally, having one guy run over and grab all the AP in squad prep sucks, and the current system encourages them to do that, which encourages everyone else to try and race them to it.

The vendor points system obviously is an attempt to alleviate this, but the issue is that the points vendor contains a number of items that are, for all intents and purposes, unobtainable or much more scarce elsewhere, meaning you are heavily incentivized to save the points and instead grab as many “freebies” as possible. The binocs are a good example of this. each squad prep vendor might have 2-3, req usually has around 6-8, every vendor has them for 5 points. The game is incentivizing you to race for the free ones so you can get something else, B12, medical hud, etc.

So, with our issue laid out, what are some solutions?

The most obvious would be to just up the supply, if supply is plentiful there is no reason to race for it. This might work for some things (I don’t think prep having enough magharns that everyone can vend one would ruin the game balance, since experienced players who want one will get one regardless.), but would not work for others, (AP mags.)

You could remove the items entirely from their free alternative. Nobody would rush the squad prep for AP mags if there weren’t any, after all, but with the points scarcity, people are also incentivized heavily against buying things like AP mags, and so this would just mean they would go to req for them instead, who would run out, forcing them to race to req, and starting the issue over again.

You can get rid of “straight upgrade” items entirely, the #1 reason people are stumbling over one another to be first in line for req are autoinjector pouches, large mag/shell pouches, and mk1s. Given these items are a straight upgrade over their counterparts(mk1 does have downsides but shhh) there is a high incentive to race and attempt to be the first there for the buffed stuff, which also means players who don’t know what to race and ask for are never going to see it, if these items aren’t in a place to be raced for, they won’t be.

The most ‘nuanced’ solution I’ve come up with so far is to split the points into different categories, for example, a medic might get 20 “ammo” points that they can spend on AP or extended mags for the weapons they’d normally be able to get that ammo on a limited basis from squad prep or req, but this would not effect their ability to buy medicine with their “medical” points. This solution already somewhat exists with specs, who had their points separated out because there was no point in buying anything but more spec ammo-- since that was the most valuable thing they couldnt get elsewhere. This solution would include removing the scarce stuff like AP ammo from squad prep entirely.
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I bring my musings in front of you, esteemed forum goblins, to ask what you guys think. What are other solutions to reduce the incentives to “speedrun” roundstart? what are other ways to encourage more roleplay & interaction? What are the flaws and benefits of the current systems and the different solutions I’ve outlined?

I’m interested in hearing what other people’s perspectives are on this. I intend to undertake a coding project based on what info I glean at some point to hopefully push things in the right direction.

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Too long; didn’t read.

If you want to make me RP pre-drop, automatize at least some of the preparations. I am really tired of clicking the same buttons every round, I wish we had presets.

Scarcity is good. Inequality is great. Rewarding people is great. Tedious tasks are bad.

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Scarcity is overrated, so is clicking the same buttons for 10 minutes every time. Just make 1 unified vendor for non-scare stuff where each marine can get everything he needs. Then maybe allow saving presets into that vendor.

For the scarce stuff - make another vendor, limit it by squad ID so that squads would not steal from each other and put all the limited kits there, so no req line.

But I think the problem is that if there would be no mechanical stuff to keep people occupied, they would just keep pushing for earlier and earlier drops. And, on the command side, I actually need the time to plan the operation and get everyone in CIC on the same page.

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Interesting suggestion, although for the “scarce” vendor that sounds like going back to old SL mini-req, which I actually liked but I assume there was a reason it got axed, not sure I didn’t play when it got removed, only before and way after.

The lack of mechanical stuff to be doing is part of the point, ideally stuff that encourages interaction gets added/expanded to fill the space. Most of the time I miss briefing as a medic main since Medline, etc takes up so much of my time.

What would the role of the points system in the current vendor be with your proposed system?

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I’m not advocating for this, just giving my opinion on the most effective way to “increase” free time by decreasing pre-drop rush time. I personally don’t feel the need for change, since the pre-drop free time we have now is pretty sufficient for my RP needs (which are admittedly not very high).

The core issue is less equipment scarcity and more the fact that lines exist. The req and Chem lines are the bottlenecks. Resource scarcity is not the root cause, because if req & Chem was infinite, we would still see people scrambling to get to requisitions. Why? Because there’s only 2 foolish humans manning 2 req lines, and 1-2 doctors manning the chemline. The root cause of “wasted time” is the inefficiency in distributing goods, not the scarcity of the goods themselves.

As such, if you want to decrease “wasted time”, you must maximise distributional efficiency. That means completely axing the need for humans to vend req gear or make chems for medics, and totally automating gear procurement by moving everything to the individual marine vendors in the prep rooms.

If you want to keep scarcity, globally limit the available quantity of certain items, e.g. M2C, MOU & other restricted weapons, kind of like how specialist kits work. Presumably increase the point cap accordingly, since all the free shit you’d otherwise get is gone.

That being said, half the playerbase would just AFK in the DS anyways.

TL;DR resource scarcity is not the problem, resource distribution speed is. Maximise resource distribution speed by going full self-serve.

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Ye I’ve been wondering for a while why do we not have infinite attachments.

The point system has been bad since introduction, with SL armor (why is this an option?) and medhud (why cant we see defib status and our own health by default yet?) it’s hard to justify buying anything else so about any rework would be better than what we have now.

As for autoinjector pouches etc its just results of bloat where we add better stuff without properly removing the older or nerfing things without bothering to remove all instances of the older better versions (why do we still have auto injectors?).

Someone should fix all that but good luck to whoever attempts.

its false scarcity and inequality should be per role basis (hpr heavy machinegunner squad role when?)

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The simplest way is just not touching points at all.

The only real scarce stuff now is restricted primary weapons anyway and I feel like the way to solve the rush for them is something like a lottery where 1/3(or 1/2) of marines spawn with a restricted weapon coin, which they can trade for a restricted primary at the vendor, give to someone else, or just effectively unlock 1 weapon at the vendor for someone else in their squad to take. Then you can futher limit each weapon per squad, so no Alpha bringing 4 flamers. That of course may create the scout problem of having to rush and lay claim to your weapon.

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Gearing up takes a few minutes every round, it’s not that big of a deal even if you’re going for a loadout with 10000 items in it, I have over 2000 hours on riflemen and it has never been a bother for me. We currently have the easiest and quickest loadout system CM has ever had and we still find a way to complain…nothing ever happens :broken_heart: ( you don’t even have to dress yourself / put armor on anymore bruh be so fr. )

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Thinking about this just brings me back to old squad req honestly. I think having some inter-reliance for less standard gear is a good thing and I do agree that a large part of the bottleneck is just actually getting the items, getting there earlier means further up in line. I am however against giving every marine’s prep vendor MOUs and M2Cs and the like, and I think (a)SL mini-req is a good solution for keeping the close player interaction. (the mini-req wouldnt have things like attachments, the squad vendor cap would be increased for those.)

my gut feeling is that re-adding the squad mini-req would be a very hard sell, though.

adding to this, ideally each squad gets their section, the SL gets a certain amount of picks for different “squad specialties”, for example at medium pop they may get two “heavy gunner” picks that give them a choice from HPR, M2C, or M56D, similar for ‘breacher’ with flamer/mou/xm51, that sort of thing-- basically riflemen subclasses-- likely with main req getting some spares. Ideally this would reduce the roundstart strain/bottleneck in req, and promote socialization and team-building.

Would also cut down significantly on the ‘unfairness’ of a straight lottery system, I already think ‘spec rolling’ and then racing for the spec kit you want is a bad mechanic.

gear up time is not the issue here. The point is that, from the perspective that “speedrunning” into prep/req for certain items because they are limited is bad, and what can be done to allieviate this. Time spent actually looking at the vendors/getting dressed/waiting in req line is mostly irrelavent except to how it interacts with the desire to throw on a uniform and blitz to the line

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people who refuse to play the game if they dont get their items shouldnt be able to play the game at all :slight_smile: ( LEARN TO ADAPT NOOBS. )

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As someone who’s been an SL main since before, during, and after the squad req era, I can definitely say that it suuuuuuuuuuckeeeed shit. While it did perhaps create some more roleplay potential, ultimately marines simply just want their shit, and as a Squad Lead you are already incredibly strapped for time at the start of the round to gather up all the shit you should be carrying and get your guys in order, and any more blockage put on top is, in my experience, detrimental to what RP time you do have, and the playing of the role.

P.S. Inversely, bring back gear lockers it’ll be funny.

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As long as we get infinate maghars I am fine with it. However as someone pointed out the main killer of time is the req line. Its one reason I trained myself to not use anything I can’t get from my vendors. From what I have seen medics get it the worse since the doctors have to make it themselves. However the easist way to solve the medic line issue is giving them infinte chems. In the character profile tab you can upload a chem loadout. Then in game you go to a machine that will automaticly give you it it for you. Now the idea of infinite med might sound game breaking but it won’t. A medic can only carry so much stuff at one time. Same with normal ammo if you have a good req the marine effectivly have infinte mk2 ammo. But that does not marines never run out of ammo they need to go back to fob.

In fact this raises a question why not apply this pre made loadout option to all vendors. Idealy useing the mutiple point types system suggested by others. This means you save time on everything. The marines have been on this ship for a while. It not too hard to imagine that they just keep there fully decked out gun in the vendor. We can include rare items you normaly have to get from req in the vendor too. But for a high point cost. Example would be like how b12 armor or the HPR used to work . This means in theory req lines might not need to exist and they can focus on the crates. This gives marien time to RP. Even if some will still go ssd in the dropship till takeoff it still makes the game more fun.

It would also fix the issue of miss clicking and wasteing points on something you did not want. We have been there.

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I appreciate your opinion on the matter, it’s surprisingly hard to find people who actually played before and especially around the time of it’s removal, especially as SL. I played beforehand but never as an SL, the folks who knew about it on the discord said it was just because SLs would dump everything out and ignore it, so it’s good to have more perspective. I’m interested if anything comes to your mind that’d distribute scarce items like restricted weapons without creating pressure to rush to req as soon as you can phyiscally get your boots on.

as for reducing req line chaos,
The req roadmap’s vision is to have a computer where you can pre-select your req order and have the guy manning the line approve/deny it and have it auto dispense all the items on the order, which is, unfortunately, probably beyond my ability. (new-TGUI is not something I have been able to learn to code, and any implementation would require tguification of req as a pre-req.)

I’m also interested in hearing more of the ‘balance’ arguements for (nigh)-infinite attachments, from both marine and xeno players, do you think everyone being able to dispense a free magharn would significantly change the balance of the game?
Personally, I am of the mind that anyone who actually understands what a magharn does and has played the game for a bit (anyone above PVT really) is going to go to req and get one if they think they need one anyway, so I doubt much would change. (maybe overly streamlining the game?)

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Current system is mostly ok. Prices aren’t priced very well - a lot of stuff people never buy is inexplicably very expensive. You can waste points on a lot of gear you can otherwise get for free. Tons of these noob traps in the vendors, and then the odd thing that is worth buying is so expensive you can’t pick up anything else.

For awhile we had a lot of restricted weapons in prep, so you could just buy or grab them. That made the req lines about 3-5 people in highpop and people complained how soulless it was, and then balance goblins got involved, and we moved a lot of stuff back to req only so you can line up and wait for it.

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I think current system is fine.

20 minutes is more then enough time for 90% of ppl to find their friends and start talking to them (which imo is most of what ppl do on pre-drop once they feel settled in to the server).

Speedrunning req isn’t inherently a problem either imo. Just be faster.

The benefits of speedrunning prep:

  1. More efficient time usage
  2. Less energy spent
  3. Better chance of getting your preferred loadout
  4. Less waiting

the disbenefits:

  1. Bad for high ping users
  2. New players might find it annoying since they prep slower
  3. The line fills up faster (which naturally, would happen regardless of if people rushed)

I don’t think it’s hard tho. It’s pretty easy to learn, which is why many people do it. I don’t think enough ppl take the niche guns for it to be an issue, but it helps.

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I can’t think of any real way haveing infanite maghars is bad. Most marine have a gun. As of now most marine have a maghar. It is effectivly standered issue as everyone will wait in req for one. Its not a question of if everyone has a maghar as that almost already the case. The only diffrence is less pain for both marines and cargo techs. To prevent lag just have all guns taken from the marine vender have maghars pre installed. That way no lag from disspensing 10000 maghars by some noob.

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Corpsman prep times are long enough that its easy to miss first drop and I often miss briefing.

There is no engagement in rushing.

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The point of equipment scarcity in CM is to be constantly removed because marines get buffed all the time

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The simple solution to encourage more RP and interaction is to shift the marines into a full-fledged penal unit. Failure to obey orders results in execution on the spot. Racing for the sparce equipment upgrades will be secondary towards obeying command. The early ship briefing will be treated as a prison roll call taking account of each and every marine. There will be no more afking in the DS with this, just being present in the mandatory briefing will be sufficient for RP.

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Yeah, squad req was kind of laughable. Guess what they all turned into? Self serve stations. If every aSL ends up vending everything so marines can self serve and they don’t need to sit there as a glorified CT for 20 minutes, then what’s the point of squad req?
However, full self-serving is very controversial (So realistically, it’s not going to happen) so we just gave up, axed squad req for being shit and backtracked.

If implemented to ‘increase RP’, any SL would be forced to sit there during prep, which kind of just negates the whole point of RP time in the first place. I don’t see squad req as an ideal ‘solution’ whatsoever.

Imo it’s either keep the current system, expand req lines & chem lines, or full automation.
I’d rather keep the current system, although I WOULD like to see the ability to vend common mixes like MB KD IA for points…

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