Updates discussion thread

[Challenger]

do whatever the fuck you want to researcher, the role's already at rock bottom

[Jonesome]

It's ruined a lot of shipside jobs, frankly and bluntly, and I'm hoping that they'll at least get partial functionality restored.

Depressingly accurate, the changes over the past year have made me never want to roll another ship-side job again due to the inevitable boredom and heading to Cryo, feeling like I wasted my time. At the very least, SO and PO have much more depth to them than they used to - they now feel like vital, interesting positions to play - but at the expense of making the other roles virtually worthless. It’s taken one step forward then two steps back. I think the devs have been slightly overreactive in combatting the powergaming issue by deleting standard features that you come to expect from a SS13 server. It’s bad enough that there’s no real antagonist element on board, but removing any chance of having some meaningful activity to do other than e.g. a shallow minigame of repairing a broken engine over and over, makes gameplay feel like a repetitive chore rather than a dynamic and elaborate experience it should be.

Honestly this game is great in so many ways, to echo the sentiment that it’s got more entertainment value than most triple A titles these days, which is why it’s a shame to see once great aspects become nonexistent.

[Kesserline]

Anyone has some insight about the ovipositor's Queen shit ?

Is that a cool thing ? How the Hive reacts with less screeches on the frontline ?

PS : I think I'll have to discover it myself after work '-'

[NethIafins]

it's an inherited issue with combat oriented games in general. Even if you have supportive roles (akin to MT/CE) you do not want them to interfere with the game. You don't want a bald engineer to entirely fukk up the operation even before deployment (and thus you can't roleplay "Houston YOU have a problem"). You don't want to have MLG pro no-scope CE that can overdrive SM/tesla/singulo to turn tides against aliens. I mean both xeno victories and marine victories should be an achievement of a group, not a single person.

Other roles will be updated... in due time

[Dumblike]

I liked a lot the ovipositor queen, tho I haven't played it yet, the lack of screeches and more powerful pheromones makes conflicts nicer than just *screm and capture

[Kesserline]

I can't wait to finish my workday to test a round against the Hive

[Feweh]

People need to realize that generally we release 50% of an update, see how it works and then later add the other 50%.

Because we're a game of balance and volunteers... the dev team needs time to see how meta and game-play turns out.

You've already seen the Medical changes get multiple updates since and the queen update will go through many more too.

[Surrealistik]

My big issue with the Queen update is that her global pheromones are way too strong; they should only have a partial effect as compared to their strength when near the queen.

[HKO20006]

PSA It was reduced.

[JennerH]

Feweh has a point. The medical update was terrible at first, then they lowered IB chance and now from a marine and a medic standpoint I think it's great. Haven't played doctor though so dunno how they're feeling

[misto]

queen seems good change. maybe evo could be cut to half rate instead of full stop in walking mode so the hive whines a little less about losing evo points

[caleeb101]

Can someone provide me a reason why is it a good idea to make a change that forces you to spend 30 minutes in medbay each time you get an IB/poped lung, while not even being able to talk to people around you because you're unconscious due to oxy damage?

although it seems bad now, they'll probably add something to balance this out in time. Even if they don't, after enough complaints come in they will. Because being a doctor is already hard enough without having to actually -fix- organs. You're at the top of the skill system as a Doctor so you're the fastest/most efficient with surgery. And it still takes you 3 minutes minimum to fix broken bones... and then on top of that having to fix a punctured lung which would also take.. lets assume another 3 minutes (probably longer since it's organ related surgery but we don't have a procedure in game right now). That's six minutes to fix one marine, also trying to put into perspective the fact that they won't have more broken bones/issues. And you have to look out for necrotizing. And higher priority patients are rolling in by the second.


No, I refuse to believe the admin team will leave those kind of shenanigans to go on for very long/at all. It would be hell. They always balance updates usually so yeah.. only time will tell.

[Steelpoint]

The new Spec Scout kit, I've found, is very mediocre and is likely the least powerful of the four Spec kits.

I won't go on a long rant but my points summed up are...

• The Cloak is a gimmick. Xenos see right past it in most cases and it does not last long enough to be meaingful.
• M4RA starts with too few A19 mags, and the A19 mags have very little ammo in them (A19 has as much bullets in a mag as a Sniper, but the Sniper deals a lot more damage per bullet)
• The kit lacks any real reason to exist.

Each spec kit has a strong reason to be present, and provides a good service for the marine team.

The RPG provides consistent, and reliable, explosive damage with good accuracy at medium range. The Grenade Launcher provides excellent close range rapid explosive damage consistently that can reliably kill a aggressive xeno that is without support, and is the soft counter to Queens. The Sniper brings consistant high damage to xeno targets at long range, it likely won't kill a xeno by itself but it punishes xenos being in the open and can rarely pick off xenos that are weak.

The Scout kit provides a mid-range, mid-power, rifle that has accuracy issues at range and lacks the ammo to reliably use on targets for an extended period. It's the poor man's Sniper. The cloak provides no real tangible benefit aside as a gimmick or to be shot by marines mistaking you for a Predator (more so since xenos see right through it).

Using M41A ammo with the M4RA is nice until you realise you are literally just using a M41A with a scope and foregrip at that point.

The M4RA is a good Marine weapon. But a mediocre Specialist weapon.

E:(I should note the M4RA was viable and effective to use on WO since the four weapon who spawned with a M4RA had a entire backpack filled with A19 mags, maybe even their pockets. So they could go hog wild.)

[kooarbiter]

I got up today and went to CM (after other stuff) and checked the changelog for the past 4 days or so, then i had to change my pants, fucking good stuff @staff keep it up

[Butlerblock]

Upgrade/Evo system needs tiny tweaking from early stages. If the Queen goes into ovi before larva start evolving, then the upgrade will hit just after evolution which is fine granted you're at max plasma and are ready for the evolution and are quick enough. Though if the queen takes a bit and ovi's a tiny bit after the larvas evolve then the sents/runners will upgrade just before their evolution hits the requirement, and the upgrade will up their max plasma. This would normally be fine, but anyone off of weeds will get pretty screwed over(aka runners and sents actually doing their job) and the people doing nothing standing on weeds will hit their plasma cap asap. Another slight problem is that sentinels will hit their max plasma faster than the runners will, so they automatically gain an evolution advantage.

tl;dr: Runners and sents doing their job won't be able to get t2+, those sitting around will.

[Surrealistik]

Upgrade/Evo system needs tiny tweaking from early stages. If the Queen goes into ovi before larva start evolving, then the upgrade will hit just after evolution which is fine granted you're at max plasma and are ready for the evolution and are quick enough. Though if the queen takes a bit and ovi's a tiny bit after the larvas evolve then the sents/runners will upgrade just before their evolution hits the requirement, and the upgrade will up their max plasma. This would normally be fine, but anyone off of weeds will get pretty screwed over(aka runners and sents actually doing their job) and the people doing nothing standing on weeds will hit their plasma cap asap. Another slight problem is that sentinels will hit their max plasma faster than the runners will, so they automatically gain an evolution advantage.

tl;dr: Runners and sents doing their job won't be able to get t2+, those sitting around will.

This has long been a problem with the upgrade system; it's especially bad for productive Drones which have a slower evolve timer on top of everything else.

[Butlerblock]

This has long been a problem with the upgrade system; it's especially bad for productive Drones which have a slower evolve timer on top of everything else.

But you have the entire 0-200 evolve progress to max your plasma, but with the new upgrade system you have from when you upgrade to when you get max evolve to max plasma, which is usually from 10-0 ticks.

[misto]

make possible to carry 1 egg per hand please. to find out why, try playing a drone when there aint no carriers or hivelords to help out and the queen lets all t2 slots get hogged by hunters and spitters

[Nyeshivuu]

Honestly its kinda countered by the fact that all OTs have an ims now, but when i am a doctor i hate being bogged down by dozens of marines with internal bleeding, organ damage and broken bones that you'll never be able to get to because wounded marines are coming in all the time.

[Heckenshutze]

Not really an update but something I've found out in the past rounds. (THIS IS MY OPINION) If you manage to hit a xeno with the whole buckshot pack (3-4 shots) It should crit all T1 xenos no matter what their upgrade level. The fact they mix that up with the pheromones makes the 'raison d'etre' of the buckshot useless WHICH IS, put down a dumb enough xeno to get closer to you and miss a tackle or a pounce in one swift single shot.

(Again this is just my opinion, it's the way I feel about the shotgun currently) Xenos who fuck up enough to eat the whole buckshot deserve the insta-crit if they're T1, regardless of what the xeno buff would be to outcome the shotgun buff, I want my realistic shotgun in my 2D spacemen game.

[Steelpoint]

That is a concern of mine as well. The prevalence of xeno pheromones on such a large, and powerful, scale have made Marine weapons less reliable in expected damage. Sometimes a xeno will buckle from one buckshot, other times it takes a lot more firepower to deal the same damage. There is simply no physical tell for Marines to see the effectiveness of their attacks.

----

I've put in some rounds as a Medic and I've found the biggest issue I've face is medivacing wounded Marines. Its a impossible task to ask a Standard to drag someone in a stasis bag back to DS1. Not to mention you'll run out of stasis bags quickly enough.

The rest of the Medical changes I can live with, from a Medics perspectice. No idea on a Doctors perspective.

(PS: M4RA sucks as a Spec Weapon)

[False_Enigma]

tl;dr donut remove depth please

I'd like to add to noah, if I can. I had a squad strip the robotics building on LV624, send up the exsuit fab board, as well as all the parts and frames, and then get told they can't use it, it's not in the code.

I watched atleast 3 people pour an hour into the thing just to realise it wouldn't work.

holy fuck that hurt me inside. they wasted all that time for nothing.

The things on the planet that can be taken NEED to work. who cares if they produce ONE gygax, they're resource intensive anyway. that applies to the man machine interface, as well as other things. if it's on the map, it SHOULD be usable. if someone is going to go to all the work to build an ANDROID, it should work. it SHOULD take an hour to set it up for ONE android, that's fair. but the point of dedicating one round to doing something FUCKING AWESOME has died. completely.

[dylanstrategie]

Buckshot instacrit is not a big loss

If they're not crit, they literally have a sliver of health. Get a teammate, stop ramboing

[Gnorse]

I Really dislike the whole 'Standards can't use Advanced Trauma/Burn kits'.
On high-pop, 8 Medics is nothing. They'll either run out of supplies, Die or not even have time to treat people.
If you want to keep the 'Standards have to spend time to apply medical things' then yeah, sure. But c'mon.

[Blade2000Br]

I Really dislike the whole 'Standards can't use Advanced Trauma/Burn kits'.
On high-pop, 8 Medics is nothing. They'll either run out of supplies, Die or not even have time to treat people.
If you want to keep the 'Standards have to spend time to apply medical things' then yeah, sure. But c'mon.

...
You know that you can still trauma and burn kits normally, just slower and less efficient, right?