The Worsening Squad cohesion.

General Discussion
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I’ve spent the best part of an hour reading over this thread and looking at the suggestions and there’s a few takeaways and ideas I’d like to bring up and suggest.

I know WYCI is a real thing, but I really encourage anyone (like @ihatethisengine has) to just give any ideas you have regarding marine balance a go!

Firstly, let’s make this easy and split the game into 3 distinct phases; Pre-Drop, FoB and finally Caves. While each map has its peculiarities, the round flow in general follows this typical stage (or at least should).

PRE-DROP:

Remember when we had Checkpoints and MPs? If you wanted to go to hanger you needed a good reason. Let’s bring that back. Plus it gives MPs something to do. Population scaling can be done to make it easier on low pop. Either way, marines probably shouldn’t have unfetted ship access.

Charlie breakfast works because it encourages roleplay. Coming up with niche lore for each squad is important but it’s ultimately up to players to do that. Concepts like Bravo wearing Boonies (which hasn’t been a thing for years) should reinforced so they’re actually a thing.

I don’t think mechanically and arbitrarily locking the DS or Prep is the solution and the test from a few years ago proves it doesn’t work.

FOB:
So I think that the main thing in this stage is that there needs to be a mechanical and balance punishment for a marine side deciding to essentially gamble and try to murdeball without fobbing. I don’t want to sound blameful but the current system works, but it’s not always clear that the 40 minute Marine Stomp might have been avoided had people stuck around Fob and secured it.

CAVES:
I think the idea of tying buffs to your SL and making it something that’s radius based is great. We could go a few steps further, making IN SUB marines not get those perks or some other things.

I genuinely feel that we need to adjust marine scarcity to slow down this game phase and to make ammunition and other supplies a potentially limiting factor in marines being able to sustain a long engagement.

Anyway, outside these issues I think there’s an onus on SLs and COs to try. We as a staff team (and the whitelist as well) needs to come down hard on SLs who don’t put the yakka in, but also the same murderball tactics being used day in day out.

If you’ve bothered to apply for CO, you should be putting effort into your tactics. Part of the CO guidelines is that you’re expected to be a leadership figure promoting roleplay for the server WIN OR LOSE. That focus on win rate is what’s driving roleplay into the ground.

Ultimately I think most people know what we’re aiming for when it comes to an experience and while I’m a marine player, I think the reality is that punishing solo non-teamwork players and simply limiting the ability for both sides to rush and insta defeat the other through mechanical means is the way to promote roleplay.

How we break a meta that’s reinforced by its playerbase? Now we can only solve half the issue mechanically, people genuinely need to make an effort and improve things.

I hope we can use some of the ideas in this thread! I know we’ve been discussing it internally as well as some changes to the Xeno side as well.

Two points to end on,

  1. Murderball tactics should be a gamble for both sides, and they should be relatively rare.
  2. Roleplay and the Meta is a positive feedback loop powered by every single one of us and our interactions in game. The newbies look at the veterans and to fix a culture issue we need to be introspective about how we interact and set a standard. Especially so if we have a whitelist.
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Regarding the focus on degrading the prevalence on murderball tactics, I feel like this would be huge. An absolutely massive change on par with MOBA, really. Xenos currently face absolutely no repercussions for balling up and using divide and conquer tactics on the marines, which in turn provokes marines murderballing to avoid a complete wipeout, thus making marine murderball the default safest tactic. I also get the whole “COs should focus less on winning” thing, but let’s be real- It’s a TDM game and lots of people absolutely care about winning.

I recall staff were on a course for “map control” being a prime feature, with several objectives that both xenos and marines would fight over. This never came to fruition and was abandoned after a while. Eventually it evolved into the 2 static comms relays you see today, but in reality these relays are secondary objectives that ONLY skyrocket in value past the 2 hour mark for both sides (though the extra larva is nice).

Now yes, we could probably try and play with “balance” to discourage murderballing. But personally? I think that’s fucking horrendous, because I can’t even think of how the fuck you’d stop one side from murderballing without incentivising the other to start murderballing due to nerfs/buffs to either team. Maybe we could add more AOE attacks that stop large clumps of marines- But that wouldn’t work, because as we know, the queen screech is exactly that, and the only way to defeat AOE stuns is by having even MORE people at that location, not less. This is also true of acid runners, an AOE damage attack.

When your objective is the complete destruction of the enemy team’s base, it doesn’t make sense to split your forces. Why would I split my squads when I want to concentrate firepower at a cave entrance to punch through to the hive? Why would I split my hive to attack all sides of FOB when sonic speed synth and their engineer harem is just welding everything back to full? Why not all murderball on me, so I can screech and thus breach easier?

I honestly think the only solution is to change the game mode from TDM to point capture. Make the victory condition reaching X points, instead of the enemy team wiping. This would make all objectives continuously produce pressure on the enemy to assault and take them ASAP. A huge, focused assault on one point could let a smaller enemy force take a different point. It would also put a limit on round time.

Obviously this isn’t going to happen, since I doubt such a dramatic game mode change would be popular (plus you’d need a ridiculous amount of code, I assume. Though I suppose the groundwork in comm relays is there, kinda?), but that’s my two cents on the issue. I am pessimistic about our prospects of ever stopping murderballing. As long as it is the optimal way to win, it won’t happen.

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i dont think checkpoints will change anything (unless we get quality command players) forcing everyone to briefing will make marines alt-tab and wait until they hear a whistle or a warcry

also if charlie breakfast is the RP we need in cm then lets make add a pool for delta (water is blue delta is blue) for bravoid probably some arcade games and alpha gets laser tag so that all squads get their cool awesome time spent together besides of sitting around

everyone wonders why players are not rping but you look around the ship and there’s nothing to rp on everything for a marine is either locked or out of reach (even the fucking pill bottles are lol) so lets not start adding tedious procedures because its ineffective

the insubordination idea is nice but robustos will hate it because they tend to be on their own sometimes hunting for xenoids and you just KNOW that a SO will insub them one day and they will have a meltdown on discord/in-game

overall cool post but imho murderball should not be punished but it shouldn’t be the only thing you can do in this game

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Let CIC insub the people who go off solo and let them complain about it. You are a Marine, its a team-game, stick with your squad.

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I mean if insub just makes you exempt from SL buffs, there is not much to complain about. So this feels completely fair and reasonable.

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make insub like xeno banish where you can just kill people marked for insub that’d be pretty funny

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There needs to be a much bigger impact for insubordination.

I’m down to have them publicly shamed at the end of every round, instead of like the memorial it’s a “These marines were marked for insubordination by command:”

Maybe make it so that if as SL you have a good insub to round played ratio you get a promotion to Staff Sergeant.

Joke idea

Add in maybe a global insub counter that CIC can see.

Following orders should be rewarded, not following orders should be punished.

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Make it so that SO has a “mark for insub” and a “Mark for Desertion” button and if you get marked for desertion Marines can shoot you for running off.

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I think bigger consequences for being marked as insub would be a step in the right direction. However I’m not sure what consequences could be implemented and be appropriate.

I don’t think publicly shaming people would help, it could make things worse.

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no

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You can take a look at the merged and current pull requests to see the push to improve xeno murderball. Queen is currently able to frontline/murderball with more ease and not worry about the biggest obstacle which is body blocking. Soon if approved, T1’s have a way to ignore body blocking also.

So how do marines counter this? They counter by murderballing also. Some will say marines have other options such as cas/mortar/ob to deal with this however, it has been balanced in a way that xenos have an easy audible notification and direction of where it will be hitting. For a xeno to die to this, they would need to be distracted, brand new to the game, or put into a position where fleeing the targeted spot is not possible (xenos bodyblocking other xenos or in a very confined area as examples).

So I pretty much put the blame on murderball vs murderball due to the game balance and future decisions. Briefing is not necessary due to most plans devolving into alpha, most of bravo, charlie and delta hugging together.

I thought it was interesting that CM14 (RMC-14) also has this same problem of murderballing. By nature of its game engine having no tile movement or collision, you can imagine how that would turn out. That is my fear honestly with these recent pushes that we are slowly removing some of the essential tile body blocking factors even when it’s annoying to play around.

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I remember a while ago there was a mode that had these plasma gas vents that marines and xenos fought over, kinda like natural selection 2. Marines could build gas miners and xenos could plant stuff, which led to buffs for the side that controls it.
A game modifier like that which incentivizes holding areas for stuff like global evo/xeno buffs or faster intel points or supply dropped powerful sentry guns would be a good way to prevent the murderball vs murderball that is current CM gameplay.
Maybe have the mode have 2 ways to win, either wipe out the other side or to rush to the nuke/king.

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Make it so you cannot land on the fun facts if you were marked for desertion/banished from the hive.

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You know, after autofire was merged I noticed that marine coordination was actually rewarded. For a while, xenos would just murderball or flank with the queen, and if the marines countered it with a flank or with rear cover fire they actually put fire on xeno asses to plan better. Then autofire rates got gimped and… we’re back to chokepoint holding and murderballs and queen flanks are practically unstoppable unless marines ball up together.

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CIC can already do this. But for one reason or another its not used alot. ( I alone can think of like 6 of them).

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Maybe we could give the SL some tools that could help them lead. I was thinking of a “SL Tablet” which functions kinda like a cut-down version of what the SO has.

Tablet Idea 1
Lets the SL look through a marines camera but do nothing else. Just like SOs do.

Tablet Idea 2
Lists marine name and direction kinda like its is for the SO.
Private Garry, SW 23 “Meters,” “Feet,” “Squares” or what not.

I don’t want to diminish the SO role but make managing the chaos that is the marine corp a little easier for the SL.

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That’s not a shame, that’s an honour

When XOs will stop ordering meme flanks, SOs will stop contradicting each other and SLs will stop being brainrotted PFCs++ - then I might start listening to their orders

Even if my character instantly dies from insubordination (like a true red-blooded patriot) it won’t make me follow nonsense/boring orders. If you want someone to obey your commands - make them make sense

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this is just an SL skill issue smh smh

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Hello. I play Gian Conventry, you probably have seen me in SL a few times.

I believe Osmos has a great point. The flexibity of Squads and overall Mission Command has decreased significantly with the addition of MOBA mechanics. The ability of a Squad to flank or accomplish any meaningful objectives on its own has been greatly nerfed down due to various changes that have taken place since 2019.

Hive-diving was once a viable tactic when ravs were unreliable glass-cannons, and lessers were nonexistent. The bigger lighting radius allowed for visibility of threats ahead, facilitating engagement. The likelihood of a single squad achieving a decisive victory through a flanking maneuver was significantly higher than it is now. This dynamic ultimately facilitated a greater care for Squad coherence.

A great example of this was Kesserline’s and Dolth’s ability to scheme and carefully execute great plans with their whole Squad. Dolth wasn’t known as a player with great charisma, yet he managed to have his Squad tight due to sheer competence. Both of them left because they didn’t like the direction the game was going.

I have played close to 170 rounds as SL in the last 6 months and I can count in one hand the amount of times which I attempted to do something original and it didn’t result in a complete Squad wipe. More often than not, it’s ravs/lurkers picking marines one by one until medics are overwhelm. Xenos at the moment are simply built to be able to survive a murderball, this makes them exceptionally powerful when fighting a smaller number of marines.

Quoting Basil here
“Building up a good image for marines takes a very long time, and constant maintenance. Since each individual SL has to go through this process, we end up with relatively few “good” SLs- This number will never increase on it’s own. Mechanical changes to gameplay is the way to go.”

I believe he completely nailed it. We shouldn’t rely on SLs building an image through countless rounds, but rather fixing the core issues on why marines “fuck off” to murderball.

These pull requests that Osmos pointed out are the cherry ontop of the cake.

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SLs could start by not abandoning two marines to guard an incomplete comms tower from the lurker gang - if I catch my sarge pull that shit I’m asking for a squad transfer and ignoring all future orders. It’s bad for squad cohesion, but I’m not willing to die for its sake.

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