The Worsening Squad cohesion.

General Discussion
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The challenge here is often the order to hold comms comes from a (well meaning) CIC.

As a SL (I am Kolton Murphy, Charlie main) I will often gently try to amend that order or even quietly disobey it somewhat if we don’t have the numbers. Instead, I’ll pitch the squad will keep going back to comms to fix it rather than trying to hold it.

To hold comms you really need 4:1 ratio of defenders to attackers. I agree that a rookie mistake I see from new SLs, who are usually very well meaning, is following the XO’s order to hold comms.

If marines actively want to hold comms, which they often do, I’ll make a FT and do my damnedest to keep an eye on them and QRF if they need it.

Also have to say, I think @giaan @osmos made some excellent points that I can’t add any more detail to other than agreeing.

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Thread necromancer detected

This tbh. Marines will only do things that make the most sense from their perspective. If command gives nonsensical or boring orders (which they do quite often) - ungas won’t care

And then we see some high quality CIC meltdowns, where they complain that nobody listens to them

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Man, revisiting this thread just makes me want the SL pheremones even more :skull:

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I agree that the current state of murderballing is a shame and pretty much every point has already been said here.

The only solutions I’ve seen here is multiple map objectives (not just killing the xenos/marines) and re-balancing everything to discourage murderballs (not really stated how though).

With multiple map objectives maybe we could introduce lanes which would be the primary way of getting to the objective and have the areas around it be for backliners…

On a serious note, you I’m not sure how this would work, like if you have objectives that give you points/bonuses/buffs/whatever, assuming marines are on the defensive, the xenos’ most effective strategy is again just to murderball and defeat the objectives in detail, one by one and have one or two backliners patrol them to give a warning and then move the murderball again until they win.

For marines I’m not sure what the best strategy would be as if you leave a couple at the objective the xenos just roll up, kill/capture them and now you permanently lost the guards. If you put enough guards to hold off the xenos, xenos will just go elsewhere (where there are now less guards) and wipe that place instead.

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quite but i mean this thread is still relative.

quite i am the same the more time goes on the more and more i think its a good idea.

part of the issue is that kind of do have this but its the wrong kind of objectives and it its got too long of a time limit before its really useful. i talking about the comms units btw, the marines only need to hold one for most of the rounds as the xenos can’t make use of the comms untill much latter… so there only really a need to hold one of them… whats more we can only get the nuke much latter so again not much of a point holding more than one comms unit. whats more the comms units always spawn with one close to a LZ.

what we need is not king of the hill objectives… as clearly they are not working out to stop the death balling.

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Thread is way too long at this point, skub thread and unreadable. Devs surelywon’t read 100+ messages

May as well archive it and make a new one

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true that being said does the staff archive stuff or does the thread starter?

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I think this thread is useful for SLs as it has a lot of good advice as well as outlining some of the challenges SLs face. Sure, we can say “devs pls fix”, but its not an easy thing to fix. In the meantime, there are things SLs (and SOs) can do to help with squad cohesion.

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Idk about that, we don’t really have a dedicated dev team anymore. They all turned into maintainers, since the bulk of actual new stuff is coming from contributors now.

Overall, much better than closed source- But it does mean there’s little drive to ‘get things done’ unless it actually interests someone enough to code it. Since this kind of thing is a bit more complex than copy-pasting things in VSC, the actual number of people who COULD even do this competently is relatively small.

I suppose someone with no idea what they’re doing could theoretically just keep posting shitty PRs filled with terrible code and have the maintainers review it until it works, but I suspect you’d get crucified shortly after the 7th review.

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I think the people who want stuff like SL pheromones miss the point completely. Usually it’s kind of an ego problem where they go “how dare anyone not follow me!” And then if you ask them whether they follow the SL when they don’t SL themselves you’d get an answer like “I’m a leader, not a follower.”

Leadership in CM is an actual skill you can transfer from and to IRL and it varies with the people present. Yes, marines are never that good at it, but the game is not balanced around marines performing at 100% efficiency. The proper mentality for the marine leaders is understanding that if you manage to get your troops to perform even slightly above average, you would accomplish a lot. On the SL level it’s like if I can get my squad to perform not at 20% but at 30% efficiency, a good SO would add 5% more and a good CO 10%, then we’d completely wreck the xenos.

On the general topic, squad cohesion and performance is just the same as it ever was. Squads can do advanced orders, but you need to have the right leaders on all levels for that. On a squad to squad basis:
Alpha: same as always, the generically competent squad, but you can’t expect miracles from them.
Bravo: if they get the right SL, often the best squad due to the amount of stuff they have to do.
Charlie: trash, mostly good for the veteran support personnel.
Delta: good for maybe the first 20 minutes after deployment, but really loses cohesion quickly and, also has too much dead weight.

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I get the gist of what you’re saying-
However, I don’t believe that lumping anyone who wants SL as hypocritical egomaniacs is at all fair. It reads off like you just had a bad encounter with someone and are generalising it to everyone.

If you scroll up, you’ll find that loads of people who would like to see SL pheremones (myself included) say almost exactly the same thing as you in your later points e.g. cohesion remaining stable for the game’s lifetime.

This is mostly due to the fact that average SL skill levels have remained constant.
It’s also why I believe that in order to increase competency, changes to gameplay mechanics must be made, since you cannot increase average SL skill (outside of some kind of really good SL boot camp tutorial).

You imply that marines being disorganised is part of the balance, which is true.
However, I don’t believe that squad pheromones on their own would impact balance significantly…

The main reason I want SL pheremones is because frankly, the current order system is very under-utilised. Most SLs are rather bald and probably don’t even press the order button once in the entire round. It’d be great to renovate it into something even new SLs can use effectively, whilst also encouraging people to stick with their SLs.

Regarding the orders themselves- Honestly, I don’t really see what the use for HOLD and FOCUS is. HOLD gives slight painkilling effects to everyone, which is honestly pitiful compared to MOVE’s flat speed boost. You need a CO’s leadership to reach tramadol painkiller levels, but at that tier MOVE is essentially sonic speed so it still blows HOLD out of the water.

I’d rather see HOLD become more of a recovery effect, e.g. drug metabolism increases for everyone within range instead, or medics gain a slight speed boost to all medical actions.

Regarding FOCUS, I honestly have no idea why this exists. Marines already shoot with relatively good accuracy, so using FOCUS is a waste when you can use MOVE.

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Obviously I’m not saying all SLs are bad or anything, but SLs tend to be a bit of prima donna’s(me included). And it’s not a single bad encounter, I’ve actually seen a fair share of toxic SLs in my time. They’re a minority, but they do exist and they’re a normal working situation for any CO.

And in general I just don’t like how people keep trying to mechanically remove all points of failure from CM which is simultaneous with removing any skill from it. You mechanically tie marines to their leaders - the actual leadership skills of those leaders no longer matter. You rework all maps to not have any tactical terrain - now there’s no tactical decisions to make. You nerf all the xenos into oblivion - now there’s no game sense or mechanical skill required for killing them.

And at some point such changes also break the RP immersion of the generally well grounded setting. That’s also my opinion on orders, I use them, but never liked that system, because it’s just too gamey. So I wouldn’t even mind them being removed completely. And pheromones make even less sense for marines…

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It would be “pheromones” as a term to describe what xenos have. We already have Engi flags that do the same thing, spread orders around them in a small area and that is explained how exactly? Flags spreading pheromones, they smell of AXE body spray, or what?

Orders as they are now feel not less gamey than that. How is that some lame CO shouting “CHARGE” makes me run super fast, while otherwise the same CO gave me orders that I consistently disobeyed, because I think he is a nerd without any combat experience on a power trip?

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It’s two things I’d say:

  1. Current SL/CIC playerbase is too bad meaning that both the leadership is not responding quick enough, and the players in turn don’t respond to an order. Half the rounds where you order a flank or anything to do with “X squad go here and do specific objective Y” half of a squad, or maybe even the SL, will completely ignore you and walk to the meta front position. And why wouldn’t they? They are more likely to die in a undermanned flank than in the enlarged murderball.
  2. Xenomorph playerbase is higher quality. A lot of Good quality leaders/chungering marine players don’t play on this server anymore. Playing on PVE or the RP server. Or banned, the fun secret third option. Bug players, with no alternatives, still just play here and mog the marines at Marshalls on Solaris. Marine players can learn to better fight with repeated fights and back and forth. Marines learn nothing from being wiped or grabbed and gged cause no one rescues.

I’ll use an Example :

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This is a plan I did a long time ago when I was CO latenight. The Alpha SL that I ordered to do this was Braden/Kirsh. Thankfully, the bugs didn’t defend any of the colony, so Charlie and Delta got to Filt easy. Braden in this scenario is rather isolated from the other squads, but on purpose. He secures the flank to the north to relieve pressure on the filtration choke. When Every squad was in position around filtration, the Queen got off Ovipositor. Braden - cause he has experience and a pulse - would yell for his squad to fallback when Queen stomps were even heard near him. I would reinforce this by yelling for Alpha to run, and for Charlie/Delta to push on the other side. Boilers/Hivelords can very easily hold a choke and rebuild it over and over. So the solution is this. You do a little danger dance with the priority of the Hive. If the Hive overcommits on Charlie/Delta, Alpha pushes in and gains territory. And Vice Versa.

If Braden was any other first time SL, he may not make the call to run early when a rotation is recognized. This “dance” went back and forth 4 or 5 times across 10sih minutes. Entire time Xenos are losing territory or Larva. If Braden fucked up a single time, all or part of Alpha is dead. Which means we’re stuck at filt. We’re not in caves. It’s cooked. A lot of people will say and cry and whine “oh to flank you need air support/explosives/insert spec here.” Braden had none of that. Did it anyway. All you need is an M41 and Big Text voice. Any competent SL with a squad listening should be able to do it. It’s just about kiting out a charge/wasting enemy cooldowns, and hoping - trusting - that CIC will order the other side to push while your side is busy running for their lives.

That’s all it is. Players learn very little from wipes. Most of the time when I order a flank, if the SL is not competent, or I’m not leading it myself, the call to retreat is not given in time. This leads to a wipe where no one learns anything. I have zero idea what the solution is outside of asking CIC players to just make individual squad orders, and not flame them if it fails. Which it will. The CIC - even if it IS robust and responsive - may have Marines who aren’t.

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Funny thing is i tried this exact plan when i was aCOing also latenight. Whats more it fell apart just for this reason.

Alpha was lacking man power do to the fact the good part of them didn’t go with the plan and just deathballed with the rest. by the time the deathball made contact at filt…alpha still was lacking the man power to flank. The SL to his credit was still following orders, but seeing how shit was going i had to recall the under manned alpha from the caves and to GO all the way around to main front deathball and join it.

This is part of the issue with every thing from a CIC/ Command view WE KNOW the ungas are going to unga. Trying to even order things like flanks will almost always be under manned risking a wipe with out much of a gain.

This is part of the reason why lads don’t trust Command they don’t seem understand a large part of why the CIC plans seem to fail, is not because the plan is necessarily bad, the plans are just high risk and high reward… but if they don’t move in mass and the flank is half manned makes the plan that much more likely to fail.

like for that plan i put out may of seemed dumb to the ungas after all command told them to go north caves…than they were told to leave the caves and go all the way around to filt. it to the lads following orders will have felt like a waste of time… and to the lads that didn’t follow orders will have felt vindicated.

When in reality the plan had to be scraped so as to prevent a wipe, not do to the poor plan but do to the large scale disobedience.

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this is the real reason flanks don’t work.

So many times I’ve gathered a group of ungas at a front stalemated at a hellchoke and told them in no uncertain terms, we are flanking to pull attention off the front and RUNNING LIKE HELL AS SOON AS WE HEAR STOMPS only to hear the queen stomps, and watch as the marines who came with me are still clicking on resin walls, at which point I have a few seconds at most to try and convey to them to run, and I have to choose between sticking it out with them (and probably dying/getting capped) or running away with the few who have the smarts to pull out in time (and leaving the baldies to be caps for the hive, completely negating any advantage the flank may’ve been)

I think a lot of people have a misconception that flanks are meant to punch into the xenomorphs and somehow kill them with significantly lower numbers than the murderball, which isn’t really true, a flank exists to force the xenomorphs to rotate some of their fighters off the front, which then allows the murderball to push. In very rare cases cading/securing a flank can allow the flankers to become the ‘anvil’ for the main pushes’ hammer, but this is very much the exception rather than the norm.

This kind of thing only works with strong and implicit trust in the SL, which can only honestly be earned by metabuddying. The new players are too clueless to understand the moves being made, the intermediate players do not want to risk sitting out of the round to follow Sgt. baldass to their death.

I personally don’t really play command much because it feels like an exercise in futility to me, there is nothing you can really do as a commander that will overpower the players’ instincts to hold left mouse button and walk forward until they find xenomorphs to shoot at.

I think the overhead chat is a big culprit of this, newer players to SS13 are effectively taught by it not to read their chat at all. it’s great for roleplay and local communications but most users aren’t really paying attention to their radio unless they have nothing else to be doing.

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True so fucking true this is the 2th biggest issue with flanking (that’s if we can even get the flank to form that’s first issue) when i aCO, so many times i have to scream and beg for the main death ball to PUSH to head long into the gap the flankers made before they all get wiped out. that’s the think about flanks they don’t have much staying power, the main FRONT HADS TO PUSH LIKE HELL BEFORE THE FLANK HAD TO FALLBACK OR GETS WIPED.

it is thats why i amost never roll XO and only really aCO… i know its futility in the end but some ones got keep the train running at lest.

Part of the issue is the chat log is filled with junk info that can make it hard to read at times, at lest with the over head chat you can keep a eye on screen for xenos and kind of tell if the SL is talking as his chat is larger. really what i think will help is if SLs have a different color in the chat log some thing to make it a bit more clear that THAT the SL is talking on comms. i am thinking a more neon colors will help as it will pop out a bit more making it a bit more ez to read and to notice.

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Reserving a post as a former draftee. If you’re gonna bitch about cohesion - nut up or shut up. Will expound later

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No doubt you can execute this plan, but oftentimes it’s not worth to take the extra risks until you have to.

Like if I were a PFC in Alpha, my gut feeling would be “oh god, we’re gonna die”. I’d still follow the SL here, but I’d be rather resigned to death and I wouldn’t really blame any Alpha marines who’d go meta instead.

On a more general note, I think that it’s not correct to blame the Squad Leaders for the low cohesion. They’re just the usual scapegoat. It’s natural for people to try and save face in all situations and everyone who does not have the discipline to follow their SL would want to avoid feeling like they’re the problem, so they’d naturally go “SL bad” instead. Also, I think it needs to be acknowledged that following the SL is almost harder than being a SL yourself in a way. Because instead of going wherever you want, you’d need to keep up with someone’s tempo and work around them.

I’d go even further and say that at some point cohesion is not really the SLs problem. SL needs to actually follow command’s orders, advise command when appropriate, analyze the tactical situation and make low level tactical decisions, all the while fighting himself. Herding cats is usually a less productive task than the above mentioned ones. When I SL, I wish that SOs would be more proactive and do more of herding for me. Because they can do it better than I can. They can see what every single soldier is doing. But then again, SO is a very peculiar role and you can’t really blame people for not playing it or not playing it well. Even I, a professed SO lover, don’t play it as much as other command roles.

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Marines don’t have any sustain without cadelines, and you can’t get cades up fast enough on contact to work with a flanking attack, and you don’t have the metal to constantly build as you advance.

Xenos only need weeds to prep and sustain fighting, and they will always have those weeds in a few seconds. Always have tacmap to see where to concentrate forces. Virtually always have comms to coordinate maneuvers with the queen.

So what you get is an initial contact that wounds half the guys trying to flank, who stop or pull back a little to heal, then 30 seconds later all the xenos are back at full hp and attack again before anyone’s even so much as put splints on and it’s gg for that flank. You can’t carry enough metal, you can’t get the cades built quickly enough, you can’t heal people fast enough. You can’t survive a queen screech + 1 T3 with 8 guys. The only thing you can do as an actual strategy with marine forces is murderball all squads together; anything else is extremely risky and failure prone.

It’s really not an issue with cohesion, the cohesion problem will solve itself to a degree when flanks are actually survivable actions that help and work.

A year or three ago it wasn’t this bad. I used to regularly direct squads around and they were able to hold positions even against queen, one squad could even fend off queen+most T3’s for a few minutes (enough time to get more help) with only the support of the tank or apc needed.

Now? Forget it. You can’t. I don’t know for sure if it’s just a slow xeno powercreep, marine nerfs, or what, but you can’t hold flanks anymore. All you can do is murderball. Playing CIC now is basically just observer+ where the most effective thing you’re doing isn’t directing anyone but just keeping them informed.

Even if we added some kind of VR CIC thing where you can zoom around the map watching marines like you’re a ghost, with the ability to arrow point or set waypoints, and every marine had an up to date tacmap whenever they used it, I don’t think it would change anything, because I don’t think the lack of cohesion is the fundamental problem, I think it’s the inability for marines to sustain pushes without having 30 people involved that supports constantly cycling 5-6 wounded from the fight to the medics and back.

If you want to see marine flanks work, I think these are what actually need changing:

  • Building faster or carrying more metal in stacks
  • More survivable and dangerous sentries (possibly remove IFF on them)
  • Comms that can only go down if they’re destroyed on the Almayer
  • Un-nerfing marines healing themselves and reducing the amount of crippling status effects they take
  • Re-adding the APC and Tank; the APC especially as it helps as a staging point and safe way to heal on a flank
  • Queen screech flattening everyone on the screen, which is a straight up death sentence when its less than about 10 people

I know absolutely none of these things will happen. So it’s whatever; people want their easy stomps on flanks so that the only thing they’re ever fighting are murderballs and that’s just how this game is going to be now. Trying to get any balance changes that help marines in any form whatsoever is like pulling teeth on this server.

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