This is weird, unprompted, and uncalled for

General Discussion
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Prefacing this with I’m largely fine with ASS. I’m fine reworking charlie into a limited slot squad for tighter bonded teamwork. I’m fine with moving specs and SGs around. But, why this?

OOC: Nivrak: Oh also squad unlock order is now Kilo - Oscar (80) - Charlie (120)

Kilo, Oscar have no history or group mentality behind them. I like the people I play charlie with. Yeah I know they are still around, but I liked playing with people (IMO) who were closer to MRP than delta and alpha were. I liked the group breakfasts we did. They were soulful. Charlie is mature and kilo and oscar are not. Why are we killing it off for everyone on one side of the world. Rearranging it doesn’t make any mechanically meaningful change thats related to the rework. Not to mention the fact that according to thwomper they wanted to remove charlie in the rework but were denied by management, and we’re okay with leaving them effectively non existent for half of the worlds players.

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Does this matter? No. But neither did the effort needed to move around vars to make this change either.

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I have no clue why this is happening other than the fact that “new is better”.

This whole idea of removing old squads and replacing them with new ones is stupid. There is 0 reason why it needs to be done, other than what i mentioned above.

This is a waste of time and effort, and it ruins a squad because “old is bad” and “who cares about soul and rp”.

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It is a temporary move until I can finish up turning it to tango, it is not “new is better” it’s that charlie had a specific role for a long time and getting people to adapt to a different role under the same name and color has proved to not work and even upset some people

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I will never forget the times we had charlies, because between ASS cutting us in half, half our oldies leaving, and now this, charlie is donezo. Prandium Per Bellum, my sunny siders

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Can you elaborate? What was charlie’s specific role and what changed since then?

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I was a huge fan of how you could designate squads to do different task every op and be fluid. This seems like squad bloat (new cm brain rot term). I don’t get this change as CIC doesn’t even have enough OW consoles or SOs to over see two new squads. Oscar and Kilo from what I’ve seen just end up going with Alpha, Delta and Charlie, bringing little to no change. Squad colors have also been removed from brief which seems like another forced change to make the game more linear. (Removing the ability from marine command players to decide on what squads should do)

An easy solution would make Kilo and Oscar 200+ pop when the main squads do actually get too large

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It didn’t achieve nothing but raising player’s frustration. What is so dynamic, or non-linear in assigning red colored guys into job usually done by purple colored guys? How is that fluid at all? You don’t know what is the difference between purple guys and blue guys. All the knowledge pre-A.S.S. you had before first drop about squads is that Bravo packed a lot mats for FoB/Comms and generally people there want to play more defensively. Then you had delta, which usually wants to frontline all the time, no distractions. Charlie which should have some vets and generally be a support to others, trusted with slightly more complicated plans than to assault one direction. And then alpha, who got the most noobies, because it didn’t have any naturally born assignment, so squad unset new players would end up there.

It is like usually rolling the red d6 dice, but then complaining that you want to roll yellow d6 dice for fluidity. Please, maybe I am stupid, or something, but I fail to understand what is so different from telling (pre A.S.S.) charlie to frontline and delta to set up comms first, instead of the usual other way around? What is the difference between telling Alpha to do what Delta usually does? And what is the benefit of telling squad who already had a mindset and equiped loadouts and materials for defence (Bravo) to go frontline, while ordering squad that had a mindset and equiped loadouts for frontline to set up defences and hold them? Like in a soccer, what is the benefit of putting your goalkeeper on the offence, while taking one of your offence guys and making them a goalkeeper?

A.S.S. sets stuff in “stone”, but it is up to community to enforce the roles. You can say a squad is here to be an “honor guard”, or something, but they can just run into the frontlines, if they don’t act like they are supposed via squad they are in, it is not fault of the squad system. The natural process of learning those roles by community will be long if it is left to “natural” course of action. For the next few months (when it gets merged) admemes/mods should put a bit more effort in communicating what each squad is supposed to do and enforce it fairly harshly.

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Your opinion is just as good as mine :hugs:

The point I’m trying to make is the players built squad culture over time. A literal decade and now staff would be in charge of enforcing a new battle order system that wasn’t needed. When I think of CM Marines I think of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and the hundreds of players over the years that added flavor to the squad, each leaving it with something (Like Gramps or Reid)

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this is one out of a long list of PRs lately that fall under the category of “reinventing the wheel”

is ASS cool? I guess?

did ANYBODY ask for it? not to my knowledge.

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Alpha squad should have been the one that got axed tbh. I have no personal ties to Charlie squad, but i recognize for a lot of players it was part of their identity. I would have been pretty livid if they broke up Delta which I have spent several hundred hours playing as.

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It didn’t come up to me as such when I read your post, but this thing holds water, there is something discuss. Instead of “I can’t put red dudes in a role of blue dudes”.

Charlie (or any squad) shouldn’t be divided to three unique squads, but instead it should be a mandatory fireteams (keep unique radio channels, but still having the main one) in place, but could still keep them separate in terms of commanding, but not in terms of culture. Essentialy a Special Forces squad, which Charlie already had a thing going on with them in the old system. Eat the cake and have it too kind of a deal in my mind.

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I’ve had fun with tight knit 5-8 man Kilo squads, it’s nice when CO’s let you actually do something your squad can do instead of just setup comms and join blob.

On the other hand, the entire squad often dies to a single T3+support as 5-8 people aren’t capable of sustaining even 2 casualties and still being combat effective, especially with only one medic. You basically lose 2-4 people in the first attack, and then the rest 30 seconds later. Or the entire squad if Queen shows up.

I don’t see how the support squads can actually support anything; you have zero sustain.

I will say that there has been more and better small unit organization and it actually feels like the squad leaders matter when squads are just 5-8 people, but at the same time this is simply too small to actually fight effectively due to the way the game’s balance is.

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The thing i dont like the most about ASS is that theres too many squads and you don’t get smartgunners or FTLs. Why do you need to split Charlie in 3? Why not 2? And why can’t they have the JTAC/radio guy? Where’s the iconic smartgun thats supposed to be one of the most important pieces of marine gear in lore?

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The only thing i liked about A.S.S is the fact that Specs get pushed into squad together because fact is many specs are complimentary so having them be able to be put into fire team together is good… issue with this thought is that… we could just have it be able to change what squad the spec is in… and not this.

But yes i don’t quite see the point of the rework, there is reason we have Fireteams… but lads don’t follow the fireteams now do they? same goes for the new squads, they just unga like the rest.

its fine to have more kinds of squads open if command wants but no need for it to be force on like this.

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Existing fireteams could do what this rework is trying to do if the way you assign fireteams and the way fireteams function were changed up.

For example, setting a fireteam automatically puts people into Fireteam: Kilo, automatically sets the fireteam leader as the squad leader, and they act as their own independent squad but with both the parent squad and the new squad comms.

Fireteams try to do what this ASS thing does, but they suck and are clunky at it, so they never actually get used for anything.

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“i want to force people into a thing they don’t want to do”

im glad cm development is consistent

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May I interest you with a thing called “echo”?

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Really they are not THAT clunky… issue is that lads just want to unga, so they don’t follow the FT orders…same goes for A.S.S squads, so mah.

That’s being said FT could be better but really the biggest issue is that most players don’t understand how to ALT click the tracker.

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Right and that’s half the problem; people join delta to be delta, not to be delta fireteam kilo.

They’re unfortunately clunky in exactly the way that causes problems in them being useful:

Which is why fireteams are just an afterthought right now. Try and get even 5 people to set their tracker to the fireteam lead. Like 10% of the player population will care to bother and another 40% don’t have a clue how to do it. Right out of the gate you cannot have a cohesive fireteam due to JUST this. The problems I see with fireteams:

  • People didn’t join the squad to be put in the fireteam
  • They don’t know or care how to set their tracker to the fireteam lead
  • The fireteam lead doesn’t want to run a squad
  • Nobody is kit out to be in a distinct squad/fireteam

These are issues with fireteams that are largely resolves with this ASS thing, because people know what they’re getting into ahead of time, and they have a dedicated SL and tracker. Everyone joining Kilo is planning on sticking with Kilo, not running off to do whatever - or else why not just join Delta/Alpha?

But in turn there remains the unresolved issue of 4-8 man squads (or less god forbid on lowpop) simply being incapable of holding their ground anywhere, making the entire concept kind of pointless.

To me this feels like an attempt to resolve the problems with fireteams, and I think it largely achieves that, but the combat effectiveness of these squads is pretty terrible. You can skirmish with T1’s and T2’s to some degree, but that’s it.

I think these squads are largely useless without some kind of staying power. Alpha and Delta have that with numbers, but these squads don’t have numbers.

I think there needs to be either some kind of dedicated support squad equipment or maybe skill buffs; I don’t know what exactly, but these squads need something that preferably doesn’t help ungaballs but does help in more isolated fights. The problem isn’t in killing stuff, but rather in surviving with so few people.

 
 
 
On the theorycrafting side of things:

I’d try something like light armor that protects like medium, and/or higher endurance skill. Maybe endurance + ceramic plates by default. If the squads are a little faster and a little more survivable than a regular rifleman that might tip things enough to not get mostly steamrolled as soon as a T3+friends looks at them. The idea being, the squad should be able to get out of a fight they don’t want more easily than the alpha/delta squads.

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Keep in mind the game balances the squads, so no you don’t get into the squad you want certainly not if you late join. While yes a lot of times you get into the squad you want its not guaranteed.

Also a lot time time they do just run off and do whatever the only reason it seem like ASS squads has more cohesion is because its NEW. lads what to see what it is all about, so frankly the level of cohesion you see with them will take nose dive after a while, especially considering the gameplay pushes to just unga ball.

That we can agree on. it seem rather odd that Support squads are… just tiny squads stripped of there specs and SGs. Like they really can’t do much of anything alone. I for one think that Support squad riflemen should get Construction skill one as base line, but more restricts on offensive gear but cheaper utility.