Maybe start employing a buddy system where you get some kind of benefit to having a fellow squad mate on your screen?
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I wonder how difficult it would be to do this? I know current order systems can be laggy as fuck (JIMA flag), but couldn’t it be possible to simply port pheremones to marines, and then change the effects & descriptions?
I know this permanent-order thing has been floated around for a long time
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3 Likes
Sup gonna be real. Squad cohesion shouldn’t be mechanically forced, and forcing it won’t change anything. It’s like trying to force RP
The reason it’s falling apart is cause of a bunch of reasons.
push of “fraggers” in the community. The really sweaty “you need to win 24/7 players”. They think they’re better than anyone else and will ditch their squad first chance they get
SLs that are mute or lack charisma. Theirs a lot of them. I can probably only recognize 1-3 SLs that play constantly and are gonna be solid
,abcd. Before SLs would have to listen to command chat and relay info from it cause it was the fastest way. When ,abcd was added allowed the CO/XO to pass info to everyone in seconds removing the SL in the info/order relaying process.
Marines skipping briefing. This might seems like it doesn’t relate, but the most basic bonds are built when everyone is aware of the same plan and follows it.
People not wanting to follow orders cause it’s “lame”. This overlaps with the “fraggers”. These are the loudest people who will question every order, and influence the newer players cause these “fraggers” are extremely loud.
At the end of the day it should be up to the SL to keep his squad together, which many don’t. It’s not worth the headache of dealing with the doomers
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Damn, surely we TM this right fucking now!!!
I dunno about adding a morale debuff to not being near your SL though… Personally I’d rather no ‘punishments’. I’d rather the incentives be reward-based only, since punishing people for not ‘playing the way it’s intended’ just feels bad for the player.
If the debuff was removed I’d be fully on board.
EDIT: Looks like the guy who coded this isn’t working on it anymore? What can we do in this situation? He didn’t reply to Zone since 2023 
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I agree it should be just a (small) reward and no punishment and as I already said I think it should only affect people in your squad. The main problem with the PR is still performance and I dunno if there is a clear solution to that problem.
Evidently it can be mechanically forced encouraged. Look at xenos. They have a huge incentive to stick to leaders/queen.
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Yet, queen has to spam “follow/come here” 100 times via announcements every other round.
(Or banish)
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That’s fine, we don’t need cohesion to be 100%, just above the current non-existent level.
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I feel one reason for xenos higher level of coordination is that they possess excellent situational awareness. They move fast, they have night vision, they don’t need to fear of a backliner that’ll kill them (scout excluded).
But also every xeno is OOCly bound to follow the Queen. Only a few random Marines are bound to follow orders and, due to the fog of war, it is hard to OOCly punish someone for not following orders since the line from reasonable to unreasonable orders is hard to see
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But the fact marines don’t have those should lead to better cohesion, not the other way around. You don’t have night vision > you gotta stick to light sources, etc.
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Gah shame the lad hasn’t come back to work on it. maybe if they are still playing this tread can get them working on it again. a far hope for sure tho.
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i mean yes it will be hard but really all we need is some small nudges to encourage cohesion. The thing is part of the reason the cohesion is so bad is not just a player thing but having to do with the meta.
When its death ball all day every day not much reason to have that much cohesion.
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I know it find it so odd. I think part of the reason is how it forms conga lines of lone marines. there are some foot paths that are always used so even if you get lurked there’s a good chance of getting picked up.
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it not really that the xenos have higher levels awareness it more that they all have mostly equal awareness. The marines have uneven awareness some lads got NVGs, some got Binoculars, some have MDs.
There is a reason you find SGs front lining and the marines refusing to push. the Sg can see its a good time to push but the marines only see darkness that at one point was full of warriors.
On a side note i really need to do mult-responses from now on
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this.
the amount of marines that sit on the alamo and just SSD till the drop (some even go fully ssd to the point of needing cryo) is just shocking.
Alamo should be automatically locked down before its refueled unless a PO walks up and opens the door (and it instantly closes) to stop marines rushing the alamo and just not paying attention to breifing etc
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Xeno’s have the banishment option with no WL, marines have to depend on the CO which may not join the game sometimes. This is what makes the xeno’s more obedienent and have good teamwork in most rounds.
Marines don’t actually care since theres no real punishment for disobedience apart from jail time, they also don’t lose their ability to fight back when the CO deploys to BE them. (This kinda makes sense considering its a penal battalion)
Xenos care because they’ll be round removed and it won’t do anything for the hive since they regain larva apart from the fact they might lose a T2/T3 slot but nothing too severe.
In my opinion theres too much leeway for marines to avoid orders while xeno’s are bound by OOC rules.
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This is true.
There is also the fact the Xenos are far smaller in numbers overall, its easier to command a team of 10 to 20 people than a team of 60 to 100+ people.
Its kind of why squad cohesion is extremely high in PvE, cause its real easy to keep 10 people together, to the point you can actually realistically remember your squaddies names when there are only two squads of 5 people each.
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If you arrested every marine that was blatantly griefing, trolling, or being insubordinate, you’d have 90% of the marine players in the brig before first drop.
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I remember last time command was activly sending down MPs to arrest squads being insubordinate (Albeit, it was all River Cherry).
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