Update Discussion thread (14FEB18)

[Renomaki]

>real

To be honest, mortars aren't normally manned by one person either, so...

But yeah, if marines wanna shell the shit out of an area, let them, it is their ammo. chances are they'll get more misses than hits unless they take the time to offset it each time to make it harder to guess... Which can also lead to misses.

[HKO20006]

I have seems more rounds mortar not being used than being used, since no one giving cords/engie went to the front without telling anyone.

[caleeb101]

I really like the idea of continuously shelling an area but the ammo costing so much is a problem. That's definitely for the best though, it can be super effective

[caleeb101]

I really like the idea of continuously shelling an area but the ammo costing so much is a problem. That's definitely for the best though, it can be super effective

[HKO20006]

March 12 2018
BMC777 updated:
Significantly increased Drone plasma regen.
Spookydonut updated:
Reqs crates now increase in price by 8% everytime you order that crate to represent the limited supplies of the Almayer.
dylanstrategie updated:
Halved the amount of rounds available in M41A, M41A AP, and M39 ammo crates.
Increased the cost of M41A AP ammo crates.

[Surrealistik]

Just to be clear, what has happened is that:

You get half the AP for a substantial increase in the price, _and_ it successively and cumulatively costs 8% more (along with everything else).

Unless a buff to regular rounds is in the works, this is some serious overkill.

Also since metal is apparently untouched by all these Req nerfs, I'm predicting that metal spam becomes more prominent and Req will pretty much devolve into the AP dispensing department (the point cost and reduced yield will crowd out other options) aside from said metal spam (maybe with mine crates as a occasional guest feature).

[Kesserline]

Kinda welcomed changes! The steamrolls of USCM over Xenos were getting continuous.

Glad that's a soft nerd, I would have expected lowered AP effectiveness from devs.

AP will be still awesome, but the expensiveness will make it more rare on the battlefield. Good call!

[Surrealistik]

Kinda welcomed changes! The steamrolls of USCM over Xenos were getting continuous.

Glad that's a soft nerd, I would have expected lowered AP effectiveness from devs.

AP will be still awesome, but the expensiveness will make it more rare on the battlefield. Good call!

Again, completely disagree for the reasons I've mentioned.

Nerfing AP counts while increasing its costs is certainly the _easier_ solution to AP's hegemony, but not a good one.

[Kesserline]

It's only the boxes impacted, not the mag crates, right?

Any way, in both cases, AP is good at its effectiveness. You only need two mags for the critical pushes/emergencies.

Or, you can reserve it for elite troops or forbid it during first deployment and only issue it to squads on the Frontline.

The cost/volume ratio was to be expected to make it rarer on the field.

____________

Damn, I managed to steamroll 14 Xenos, nearly alone, with no AP and only claymores yesterday. AP is not a mandatory victory factor, and reducing its width among the platoon ranks is not a bad thing.

[Surrealistik]

It's only the boxes impacted, not the mag crates, right?

Any way, in both cases, AP is good at its effectiveness. You only need two mags for the critical pushes/emergencies.

Or, you can reserve it for elite troops or forbid it during first deployment and only issue it to squads on the Frontline.

The cost/volume ratio was to be expected to make it rarer on the field.

____________

Damn, I managed to steamroll 14 Xenos, nearly alone, with no AP and only claymores yesterday. AP is not a mandatory victory factor, and reducing its width among the platoon ranks is not a bad thing.

What's probably going to happen in practice is even more points will probably be spent on AP, and crowding out of other things will occur, besides, as stated, metal and maybe mines.

Also those xenos sound pretty bad.

[Kesserline]

It'll just require ROs to be smarter, I don't really worry about this.

[Solarmare]

If they're wasting points on AP and neglecting any other supplies, it's on them for making that decision. AP actually comes at a cost if you want to buy more of it.
Drones could have used more plasma regen so that's a good change.
The requisitions changes mean you can decide on providing an arrange of supplies rather than just spamming one thing, besides metal.

[Bronimin]

The drone plasma regen is certainly very nice to have. It used to be you could spend all our plasma and then run back to the queen to rest under her queen recovery pheremone, it made it a lot less painful to drone. With the addition of ovi and remote pheremones, that stopped being possible.

[Heckenshutze]

Well, there's only one way to find out if these small tweaks will make a difference.

[solidfury7]

Not sure if I like the idea of increasing the price of a lot do stuff by 8% per purchase because "supplies".

The way the points system worked was having a autoprinter built in to the system and it could only do limited functions. Otherwise the points system makes 0 sense.

It's also a really irritating nerf, because it's going to punish marines for not doing an all out assault. And as a CO main, that supply situation is just going to artifically constrict more tactics and that's just boring. I'll have to see how it is in game before making a real access mentioned.

The rest of the update looks great.

[Surrealistik]

If they're wasting points on AP and neglecting any other supplies, it's on them for making that decision. AP actually comes at a cost if you want to buy more of it.
Drones could have used more plasma regen so that's a good change.
The requisitions changes mean you can decide on providing an arrange of supplies rather than just spamming one thing, besides metal.

I think what's probably going to happen is the exact opposite so long as regular rounds continue to underperform against the most important targets.

And yes, the cumulative 8% cost increment was pretty egregious and unneeded.

[Solarmare]

If they want to continue focusing on AP they can, it just comes at the cost of being able to buy far less of anything else.

[Gnorse]

Any time marines find a 'meta' that works, it just gets nerfed.
And while i'm not complaining, they'll eventually run out of tactics to try out.

[Rohesie]

I expected AP to be made less useful against T1s in the same way normal rounds are less useful against T3s, not for Req to be nerfed so hard.

But oh well, the impact of these changes is that marines will have to rely even more on early aggression as a war of attrition is even worse than it used to be.

[Potato Masher]

Does AP do more damage against unarmored xenos or something? I thought it was supposed to be situational ammo for punching through T3 armor.

[Heckenshutze]

Does AP do more damage against unarmored xenos or something? I thought it was supposed to be situational ammo for punching through T3 armor.

IIRC, AP ammo is designed to ignore armor (to deliver the whole damage without the reduction delivered by the armor) but compared to normal rounds deliver less raw power.

What does this mean?


Means that if you hit an armored xeno with normal rounds his armor will reduce the damage significantly (lower than AP damage) but if you hit it with AP it will receive all the damage (not higher than normal rounds but still hurts a lot)

However, I may be wrong. From a logic point of view, AP ammo should be better than normal rounds. Crippling armored xenos and destroying non armored targets.

Explosive tip ammo when? 25 points each mag

[Casany]

If you don’t want any creativity or metas to form why don’t yall just use bots. This is for the devs, of course.

Every time anything creative or anything smart is done it’s nerfed so they don’t do it anymore. If you don’t want that use bots my guys

[GenericUsername]

Explosive tip ammo when? 25 points each mag

Pulse rifle bullets have explosive tips actually

[SovietKitty]

I think the win shift is more on the xeno players being less active, and the lesser spawn numbers than AP magazines personally.

[davidofmk771]

I have this idea that the sudden shift in mechanics regarding larva confused the gameplay a bit. Immediately after the late-join larva update, xenos essentially gave up capturing marines. However, the roundstart larva got nerfed, but the capture culture didn't really return much. I will say that on the few rounds I did see xenos win, I noticed quite a few infected marines sitting in hives waiting to burst. Not so many on the rounds xenos didn't even make it to the FOB, much less the Almayer.