Unintended balance change on Chances Claim

General Discussion
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To start off, Chances Claim has only been riddled with issues when it comes to survivors. From survivors rushing hive to get spec loot, HPR, 200 mats, turrets, and whatever in 1 minute. To Xenoes rushing them every single round because there is only one way to play the map.

Now we have come back around to survivors getting everything that they need to megafob in the first minute.

With the addition of these two PRs (one is a direct balance change).

Chances Claim - Dropship Loot Alteration + Minor Resin Change by Steelpoint ¡ Pull Request #10861 ¡ cmss13-devs/cmss13 ¡ GitHub (To stop the said dronerushing of the survivors trying to get their only real loot)

Scout now has a built in radio telephone in its helmet by Red-byte3D ¡ Pull Request #9893 ¡ cmss13-devs/cmss13 ¡ GitHub (To add utility to scout other than fragging)

You can now skip everything on the map except the Tornado. I didn’t think it was as close first since i dread playing surv on CC, but apparently the scout helmet is almost right next to the surv spawn, and you just need the couple of turrets and HPR from tornado, and you now can just rush mining and wait for REQ to send down a crate of 2 flamers, HPR, 200 mats, 50 plasteel, etc. There is no risk to this, other then pray a whitelisted CO wants to do grounside CO things (which is more common than not), so surviving has become way too easy compared to other maps.

Only thing i would really do, is place the scout helmet much further away from the actual survivor spawn, so that the laze + radio combo isn’t the eastest thing in the world doing.

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It has a little LV-like problem where the main loot you want is easily grabbable before Drone Evo + it’s a big map so it’s hard to track where FORECON are (+ limited by weeds). However like.. you see CC Survs rushed down by drones every other day. Xenos need to lock in more than other maps, is it a balance problem? Maybe. But if Xenos lock in and rush then they generally run down FORECON before they set up, especially if the survs aren’t rolling as a group.

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The real reason that loot was moved from the typhoon, and people avoid the typhoon was this.

If you make changes to the above, people will find new paths to get what they need.

The only thing caused or stopping a megahold from survs is how experienced those survs are. Much like successful drone rushes are caused by how experienced those droners are.

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This happened a lot before the change, since they had to split up and look for loot. Now they don’t have to (baring gambling scouts wanting cape), since they can all just rush tornado then go mining all together. There is nothing to dronerush since it really needs survs to not push together to work.

Again, balance does not equate “the other side has to try harder for the mechanical advantage the others get”.

Atleast it was a huge risk for a massive reward. Now its just huge reward for no risk.

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There’s no reward in going to the typhoon when the Queen can take a brisk walk over and AOE screech the two survivors that go there.

If you nerf the above, we’ll be having this same exact thread in 6 months time when a new strategy is found.

Keeping the majority of loot on a map in one spot is a 50/50 gamble, sink or swim and frankly boring. We had the same issue when survivors managed to get through A Block with the crate.

What you’re seeing is a situation where survivors have adapted and the xenos haven’t. In round where xenos have, FORECON have fallen on their faces and eaten dirt.

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I agree with your assessment.

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The question is whether it’s possible for xenos to adapt to the current situation - which I don’t believe they are. There’s no practical way to deny the scout helmet telephone from FORECON, which means the only solution would be to track down and kill them before they can call down a drop which I don’t think is viable.

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Arguing that the loot changes to CC were an ‘unintended effect’ or were bad for the map overall is kinda boneheaded honestly.

Before those changes, and even before the queen maturity rush slime that is common now, it turned the entire map into a single point of failure 1:30 slop match. If you exclusively play xeno then yeah im sure it’s fun to have all the survs capped or not worth bothering with a minute into the round I guess, but it really just wasnt’ a fair expectation on players to all know that they need to be in this location (with explosives) and out before drones evo’d or they just lose.

This meant 90% of CC rounds you spawned in with like 2 people who knew what to do and a bunch of people who don’t know all the stupid ass meta strats, and the round is over one way or the other before xenos can evo off drones.

the PR then intentionally spread the loot more equitably throughout the map so that you actually have a reason to spread out and look for things as opposed to sprinting to the absolute one spot on the map that has everything you need (and which cannot be gotten anywhere else)

for people who don’t have a surv meta IV attached directly to their veins, every building should have something worth visiting it inside it-- and the early stage of surviving should be making choices and tradeoffs about what buildings are worth visiting as the threat of t he enemy slowly increases. By nature this means that a surv team with really good teamwork are gonna be able to more effectively split up and secure different pieces of loot, whereas a less strong team that requires sticking together to fight off weaker enemies or to find items/their way will be less so. The dropship having all the guns, ammo, metal on the entire map was the absolute antithesis to this design goal, and meant that if you didn’t know that all the loot on the map was in one spot and that you were gonna have to fight 10 drones for it a minute into the round it was cooked.

To get onto another point, the dropship rush was never actually contestable for xenos if the survs did play it right, there was a literal timed to the second guide for how to secure it all before drones evo’d.

as far as the scout helmet goes I agree it’s too free atm. Calling down a supply drop from the marines is supposed to be a cool almost easter egg that is hard to do not just part of the part and parcel rush.

There is still the issue of the queen emergency maturity rush as well, and honestly I find the fact it even is an issue extremely depressing.

  • Xeno players complain about survs rushing the hive while they’re extremely underprepared with just drones and no core or queen to drive them off (esp. during lowpop where a couple of decent survs could pretty easily just end the game before marines landed.)
  • Queen panic maturity is added so that if survs get greedy and try to rush and frag the immature queen they get BTFO
  • Queens immediately turn and cheese this mechanic to instead rush the survs with a queen that is matured 5 minutes earlier than they’re supposed to be and before they’ve had a chance to get ammo or anything.

it’s a truly sad display of bad sportsmanship and should honestly be worthy of an exploiting ban until it’s fixed. The RTO pack on chances is kinda untouchable atm because of that as well, if you try and actually fight over the western dropship like the old times.

Something I’ve noticed playing survivor is a lot of players actually become completely dependent on these supply drops (even back before the scout helmet and stuff) and just kinda… do nothing at all if they don’t get one. If they don’t get the radiobag they just kinda flop down and go “ok its over we lose” which I never understood-- getting a marine supply drop is by far the least reliable thing to rely on in order to survive. Tyrargo has a similar deal where despite the RTO being pretty tricky to reach a lot of players seem to see it as the only viable option and will happily run themselves into 5 drones and die to try and grab it. That is to say the ‘felt value’ to the average surv roller appears to be much higher for the supply drops than the actual value of a marine drop to surviving.

Another interesting thing I’ve noticed about ‘surv psychology’ if you will, is that when it comes to loot caches like this there’s an intense greed that persists even after it gets people killed repeatedly. A good example being the crate push from the dropship on CC, something that hasn’t been viable for months and which people still try and do-- it’s not that hard to get in and out of the dropship with a few items if you are quick and smart about it but trying to take the whole thing with you is a near guaranteed death. The same thing happens on white antre and on tyrargo where people will try and greed/crate up all the loot and get killed for it(Both of those maps play very similarly to old CC with centralized loot caches that are extremely competitive early game in the first ~2 minutes of the round.)

edit:
something I forgot to mention is that if/when req does dump a bunch of plasteel or whatever on the survs it’s usually honestly a bit of a self grief for marines later in the round. even on chances LZ1 where the hold is kinda part of the defacto ‘fob’ later in the round that metal is mostly gonna be wasted on cades that suck for anything but a surv hold. When playing surv on chances I usually don’t actually want metal from req I don’t need it, the only thing req has that I can’t get elsewhere easier is just like. Basic mk2 mags and armor. stuff like grenades and flamers with normal fuel are obviously pretty nice as well but far from required.

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I am not saying “Lets go back to xenomorphs rushing survs and win”, I am saying break the god damn cycle we have going on on CC. I have no idea on how you make the scout helmet something of a skill when it seemed unintentional.

I have to ask, but how do you adapt to it without having to go 100% rush them from 00:06 (which nobody on each side WANTS to happen)?

I honestly only ment that the scout helmet PR was the unintended effect FYI. See how I worded that wrong.

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valid I agree that was an unintended change to how that map plays

probably move the scout helmet to somewhere more contestable (and ideally somewhere that currently you have no reason to go to) and depending on where that place is make it unmeltable (e.g. if it’s in reactors it probably shouldnt be able to have acid put on it faster than you can walk there so there’s an actual reason to fight over it.)

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maybe somewhere in this area; would need a quick assault with explosives similar to the dropship push, but is in area that drones can meaningfully be to counter a marine push there ( and is somewhat advantaged to them over the other spawn). Also makes sense cuz it’s near the other scout gear.

Unfortunately the nature of surv and xeno and the community around both means this kind of “race to the bottom” is going to be a constant issue until a fundamental rework of the system to make it not viable to do so. I know I partake in it a lot on the surv side I’ve spent ages theorycrafting with people in DMs for the new map on how to get what you need to live efficiently as possible, what you can go for, what isnt worth it, etc, because the tradeoff of not knowing exactly what you wanna do ahead of time is a 2 hour round you don’t get to play (and the missed fun RP or gameplay, etc.)

Playing as the survs, the rounds where half your team wanders off lost and gets killed aren’t really all that fun, same with really big drone rushes where you all die a minute in. The best rounds of surv come from when you have just barely not enough ammo metal etc and you have to try and make do with that limitation, sometimes you live, sometimes you don’t, but ideally you get to have a really fun battle at least trying to defend your little holdout.

As a xeno, if you let the survs get to the point of having a holdout you’ve kinda lost already, since realistically they could all just kill themselves the moment you’re about to breach the last cadeline, at best you’ve kinda maybe denied the marines the extra guns (if you kill them early enough), as opposed to what could be easy caps on isolated survs who are lost or greedy for loot, add on top of that on some maps (solaris) there’s OP loot caches which if you don’t destroy before they get to them can really fuck you up both during the surv phase but later in the round (getting nuked out of nowhere by some random unga with a Mar-50 2 hours into a solaris round is maybe one of the more frustrating experiences to exist, and I knnow I’ve slimed plenty of xenos with the incen slugs on that map which are pretty brutally strong.)-- which means you have a strong incentive to know all of the loot spots and try to take the survs out before they can even get any of it.

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As long as an RTO pack remains in Typhoon, the helmet will simply be taken out of consideration. Like you mentioned earlier; you can run in, grab a few choice pieces, and be out faster than drones can stop you.

The Scout helmet spawns on the literal opposite side of the map from where Survs spawn. The only exception to this is the Sniper Spawn. Distance is not the issue here, it’s the consistent accessibility. Despite that great distance there is nothing else to stop for except the flamethrower in the courtyard between A-Block Dorms and Security. Even then, you can still make this run, grab the flamer, and get the Scout helmet before drones can reasonably stop you.

It’s Chance’s. There is very little to loot for survivors here and even less of that is necessary for them to survive.

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I really enjoy playing survivor on Chance’s Claim. It’s my favorite map and has, in my opinion, the best aesthetic. However, survivor on it is critically one note.

My dogshit solution? Remove the LD from the FORECON CO. FORECON can talk to Almayer but they are now longer able to receive supplies or call in OBs. We on-site procurement strictly, baby.

There was a period of time after Queen Temp Maturity, but before the Scout RTO and Typhoon loot redistribution that I enjoyed where surv players had only what was available on the planet’s surface (sans Typhoon) to survive with (if they didn’t want to risk a Queen Typhoon Screech rush). It more or less boiled down to the same “push a crate” strategy (L42s from the brig armory), but it was something different for a while that wasn’t “call Almayer”.

I’d also throw some more R-walls around the colony. The only true(!) R-walls are inside the reactor or a part of its perimeter and it makes holding anywhere that isn’t on the south side of the map awful.

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chance’s claim is like the best example of why RNG loot is healthy for the game. Still a map where sentinels absolutely fold survs

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It was beyond a huge risk, it became basically impossible because of the Queen rushing, and ended up with multiple free caps.

I do agree Chances is boring and too easy as a survivor though, in my opinion the worst map for survivors, because it can be a joke surviving on, and you’re basically just a marine. It’s due to the map not being designed with survivors really in mind, they’re an afterthought, the fact you can only spawn as basically “Marines”, no option for regular civilian survivors or so - kind of proves that, among other things.

Basically what I want for the map, which might balance things out a bit -

  • More regular loot, corpses around the map with loot.

  • Forecon as an insert thing only, you spawn as a regular survivors (Civilians) most of the time.

  • Actual armor around the map, on corpses if necessary, I mean normal armor not Marine stuff, Civilian stuff, but that’s only if you normally spawn as a Civilian.

But yeah Bobby said they didn’t want this to happen, so it never will sadly.

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turning the thing that makes the map interesting and unique into yet another faction slop insert is a kinda wild move.

kinda an odd position to have considering how much you rail on how the survival rate is too low on other maps whereas CC is (or was the stats panel is broken rn) at something like 35% which I think most people can agree is probably a reasonably fair # for it. Would you also think those other maps were too easy if you survived the same amount there as you’ve argued for? Food for thought.

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I’m not saying remove them, rather make it a rarer occurrence, therefore making it more special.

Nah I’ve never said the survival rate was too low generally. It’s low on certain maps like Soro, Kutjevo and such, which is a bit of an issue in my opinion, but overall it’s fine. Also I’ve only ever really said it was a player-issue rather then loot/map specific for the most part, if you’re with a good team then you’ll have much better chances of surviving, which is very rare these days. Especially after all the survivor mains were deleted from existance.

But yeah Chances can be a joke with how easy it is, if your team isn’t completely incompetent, manages to get to the hold, it becomes literally just survive until 00:20 and you’ll 100% be found and rescued, even if you’re wiped out. For other maps it’s more like - Survive until 00:25 and you have a slim chance the marines even bother to find you.

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turning the thing that makes the map interesting and unique

No hate, but FORECON is boring as fuck. I think the interest in survivors is the contrast they show with the dominant American marine faction and how that contrast presents itself in shipside tensions. Civilians form uneasy relations with strict military law and order, and constantly rub shoulders with corporate over how their lives are to be reassigned to them. A specialist insert joins forces with the CL to collude against the interests of the operation, and redeploys to fulfill their own goals. CLF kill everyone and suicide act as meaningful heels to the marines, their beliefs and operations and massively shake up the round whenever they manage to make it past xenos. FORECON do none of that. Hell, half of the time, they don’t even need to redeploy, they already get IFF after all. With the exception of the COs rubbing hands, FORECON is echo squad.

kinda an odd position to have considering how much you rail on how the survival rate is too low on other maps whereas CC is (or was the stats panel is broken rn) at something like 35% which I think most people can agree is probably a reasonably fair # for it. Would you also think those other maps were too easy if you survived the same amount there as you’ve argued for? Food for thought.

CC is hard to survive on unless you get a CO, at which point the map becomes trivially easy and is basically a guaranteed 0:20 survival if your squadmates are at all sentient. From personal experience, outside of rare scenarios where the support technician is unfamiliar with survivor as a role or cading as a concept (and you have no synthetic to make up for it), you will survive.

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Forecon is boring by the nature of them being “Marines”, we’re literally marines 99% of the time, different factions only appear as special roles like Survivors or ERT’s.

Even if you don’t have one, just grab the Scout helmet, even if you don’t there’s a good chance the marines will naturally drop early for you, because of the meta-nature of the map.

You can survive very easily with the flamer, sentries and if you grab molotovs especially, which is fairly easy to do if you’re fast enough.

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Didn’t read the thread but I think getting everything you need to survive from req just ruins the designed idea behind FORECON survivors. You are supposed to roam the map gathering your stuff, it’s kinda stupid that you can circumvent that entirely with so much ease.

Isn’t there a radio pack on CC? Just it’s much harder to get than the scout’s helmet? Correct me if I am wrong.

I do think that to a degree survivors calling in supplies and even OB is kinda cool, just shouldn’t be THIS easy.

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Yeah the Scout helmet getting a radio recently made it much easier now, but yeah even without supplies it’s still such an easy map to survive on, due to the nature of the marines always following the dropping early meta, regardless of if they’ve been contacted or not.

Either way the issues wit Chances being boring for survivors is more so due to the meta nature of it and how the loot is set up in general, it’s always the same and the holds are always the same. There’s basically no map loot outside of a very few select places like the dropships.

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If you play FORECON like “just another squad of marines” yeah, it’ll be boring. You are not beholden to Almayer command and can pursue the objectives that you see fit at your leisure. Very often I’ll be leading FORECON on dives onto flanks to force reactions from xenos (get scouted, then bug out), fix sensors behind enemy lines, kill 2nd comms pylons, hunt backliners, act as a medic, and any number of other things since any member of FORECON has the skills to basically do it all.

Use your imagination. Surv on Chance’s isn’t boring, it’s just people play it like they would as a survivor on any other map: Survive, get IFF (optional), join the front blob. If that’s their definition of fun, then hell yeah brother, get some.

The part that’s boring is that the gameplay loop of survivor on Chance’s has a very strong, consistently successful, meta of someone rolling for CO survivor and the ease of recovering either piece of RTO equipment. The only reason it is consistently successful is because CO WL holders love to roll for it so they can larp (which is fine) and for the ones that don’t play surv they don’t have to learn much to contribute to their team’s success.

I will again iterate this point;

There’s no where to hold outside of the south side of the map because the entire map is swiss cheesable. I’d love to do a hold in West Cargo (for example), but xenos will simply swiss cheese their way around the cades because everything is soft walls. If the corners of some structures were upgraded to R-walls you could lower the amount of work that you need to do to “secure” an area and add some variety to the areas that survivors could feasibly make a hold at.

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