Update Discussion Thread (September 2018)

[kastion]

2 hours is about the perfect round length, rounds ideally should always be at least 90 minutes long, and at most 3 hours long.

That's our goal in terms of round length.

As I've said elsewhere I don't care about win rates as long as the players in general are having fun, I think that focusing on win rates is unhealthy for the community.

make t1 xenos not lame then

[Jeser]

You can't not take into account winrates in teambased combat game. And you can't make playerbase forget about them, CM went too far from regular SS13 to not care about winrates.

[TopHatPenguin]

The Almayers map has been updated so it now includes the new escape pod locations and the previous front deck changes along with a few other sections that hadn't been updated (wiki-wise) in a while.

In short there's no need to use the Almayer Temporary Image any more and will be removed later today.

wiki/images/5/54/USS_Almayer.png

[dasWurmtMich]

So why exactly are the devs nerfing creativity and sandbox play like the glass canon?

Shit like that is what we need to make the gameplay more diverse than click on a tile to shoot.

[BobatNight]

Feels less like a RP server every day.

[Steelpoint]

Now we can replay the scene in Aliens Resurrection where the half naked Commander orders the Marines to bravely run away into the escape pods, as he then throws a grenade into a escape pod to kill one xeno and kill eight marines.

[Heckenshutze]

Was the shotgun stun reduced? Because I saw a drone getting pointblanked and got up instantly.

[TheMaskedMan2]

Was the shotgun stun reduced? Because I saw a drone getting pointblanked and got up instantly.

Feels normal to me, slugs were always the one with the long stun. Buckshot did a lot of damage but if you didn't crit it they'd usually get up in half a second.



Also as for recent changes i'm a fan of them. I don't really have any complaints at the moment. I'm actually fully of the opinion that once the tank is in play Marines will be putting up good fights again, and Xenos will still probably be a hassle to deal with. Any other discrepancies I fully think will be adjusts within a week as devs listen to feedback and work on the game. Patience is a virtue, and stuff like that.

[Heckenshutze]

Feels normal to me, slugs were always the one with the long stun. Buckshot did a lot of damage but if you didn't crit it they'd usually get up in half a second.

Well I think it should be the other way, because buckshot it's supposed to be high risk high reward ammo. I don't feel like a xeno should survive or at least recover so fast from a point-blanked shot.

[SolarMacharius]

I am super happy that distress and evac have been changed. Its super annoying as CO not being able to trigger either of them. Great work.

[Madventurer]

Hello SD automatically ending the round after 22 minutes is bad IMO.

Also CIC/Brig being in a separate atmos loop servers exactly one purpose and that is fucking over xenos bursted on Almayer, who are already MEGAFUCKED because of lack of healing.

[WinterClould]

Also CIC/Brig being in a separate atmos loop servers exactly one purpose and that is fucking over xenos bursted on Almayer, who are already MEGAFUCKED because of lack of healing.

Prolly to discourage complete decapitation of the marine command structure super easy like they have had a habit of doing in the past. Xenos aren't megafucked, you just need to get good and learn there are limits as to what you can and should do. Assaulting the cic and brig all at once, prolly on the list of things to avoid as a solo beno.

[Coat McMutton]

The Almayers map has been updated so it now includes the new escape pod locations and the previous front deck changes along with a few other sections that hadn't been updated (wiki-wise) in a while.

In short there's no need to use the Almayer Temporary Image any more and will be removed later today.

wiki/images/5/54/USS_Almayer.png

That link shows the old map. The links on the wiki still show the old map, too. And by old I mean the map before the front deck and tank bay layer changes.
Edit: Solved by clearing the cache of my browser regarding that map.

[kamenkuro]

Well I think it should be the other way, because buckshot it's supposed to be high risk high reward ammo. I don't feel like a xeno should survive or at least recover so fast from a point-blanked shot.

Xenos would whine if it hurt them too much. They already nerfed and rolled it back after they cried about it. As of right now though, as long as you can get 2 shots off quick like with a tactical shotgun, they are pretty much done.

[solidfury7]

Xenos would whine if it hurt them too much. They already nerfed and rolled it back after they cried about it. As of right now though, as long as you can get 2 shots off quick like with a tactical shotgun, they are pretty much done.

I would advise you play the other side before being as silly to dismiss the opposite factions potential misgivings so "crying" it just makes you look very one dimensional and well, a bit silly.

Everyone plays CM for fun, aliens and marines alike. If one side has an unfun mechanic, it'll get looked in to, reworked, tweaked, whatever.

I remember when people use to complain about resin cuffs and people used the same argument on that.

The issue with buckshot wasnt specifically buckshot, it was other factors which made it stronger, such as people stealing armory tactical shotguns at round start.

I dig the new evolution tweaks and the multibursting, not to sure on the SD changes butttt time will tell.

[kamenkuro]

stuff

I've played xeno
It's terrible
Like, all of it. The focus on stats is probably the worst part about it. They're so dull and braindead.

[Garrison]

although I haven't been able to master shotguns, being on the giving and receiving end alike, I personally feel like shotguns are in a good spot right now.

I miss the tank dearly though.. mostly cause I never had a chance to use it. (but being that I fought it as Xeno, I can understand why it had to go)

[Snypehunter007]

~snip~

In regards to the mapping changes, I'm going to post some of my thoughts from another thread and add a few extra comments:

My opinion:
- While the reason for moving the brig might be to make it harder for marines to escape, it makes it an inconvenience to actually deliver a prisoner to the brig. It is *too* far back and the hallway runs through important areas before reaching the brig.
- Thank god that awful Tank Deck was removed.
- Pilot's Quarters are okay, though there is a lot of dead space.
- Officer's Quarters are okay.
- Commander's Quarters are okay.
- Tank Crew's Quarters are okay, but they feel a bit jammed in there.
- Vehicle Bay's feel okay.
- Missile rooms feel empty.
- All of the "kitchen" areas with the light blue/grey tiles feel way out of place with the aesthetic.
- The OB cannon and fluff AA gun feel way too far away from anything else important and take a long time to get to considering how far away they are from anything else.
- The location for the new CL office is out of the way and doesn't really have an "flare" to it to indicate the "this place is important", if that makes any sense.

I actually drew up a garage layout on the hangar deck and a way to fit the extra officer quarters into the pre-existing layout (before this most recent change that is) before I left staff, but it wasn't taken seriously. On to the upper deck changes in particular, while I said in my list that thought that the individual parts of the CIC/Officer Quarters on the upper deck were okay, the overall layout is not. There are no other ways to enter the CIC other than the main door which makes the CIC and the Brig both incredibly defendable since their are no alternative routes into it.

I agree with Novus on his thoughts about how ridiculous the Brig being behind the CIC is, as well just how cumbersome it is to drag a prisoner all the way there. I disagree on the location of the move however, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'd still recommend the design I drew for the garage and merely revert the brig and astronavigation/weapon system changes.

2 hours is about the perfect round length, rounds ideally should always be at least 90 minutes long, and at most 3 hours long.

A bit of backstory as to why I became involved in the forums and the larger community of CM is because I actually wanted to see if there were ways to make the rounds shorter or contribute to the server since I didn't have a ton of time on my hands. At the time I started playing, I was still a high-school student and would only ever be able to play maybe one round of CM a day due to the time I would get home and homework that would come up. Back in those days, rounds usually ran for about 2 hours and 40-ish minutes to 3 hours and 30 minutes, with a few outliers.

It is ironic that over two years later, I now support the reverse position. Two hours is a god awful "optimal" length time, for a variety of reasons. Out of two hours (120 minutes), 25 of those are what we could consider "dead time" where almost nothing is happening other than players on both sides gearing up and getting ready for the round to actually start. So, in honesty, there is about 95 minutes of actual round time in a "optimal" two hour round. Now, with the recent self destruct change, there is a hardcoded 22 minute "allowed" time for xenos to board the Almayer and kill all the remaining humans. So 95 - 22 = 73 minutes, minus 2 minutes to account for the initial time it takes for the dropship to go down (the only marine drop you can count on is the first one) and the time it takes for the xenos to come up. So after all the technicalities, you have 71 minutes left in the round.

While it may seem like quite a lot of time, after all it is an hour and eleven minutes of (if we are dealing in absolutes) pure combat, it actually isn't that much. Assuming that the marines aren't completely wiped out on the planet, in that 71 minute period (as the marines), you have to land, go through the motions of investigating the colony, set up a FOB, fight the xenos, and retreat to the Almayer. I can't throw out numbers for this, not even estimates, but the marines aren't on the planet that long in a two hour round.

As an former admin, I also have a problem with a two hour round because it doesn't allow for "natural" events. I often found myself having to speed up my events artificially due to the round ending early and this happened often. If you are running a "neutral" event, that being any event where a bunch of CLF or UPP DON'T show up and starting murdering people, any RP you were building goes out the window as soon as the marines start to retreat from the planet. This is, obviously, a reality that event runners have to deal with, however, for neutral events, by the time you can convince marines not to fucking murder your event members for merely existing and start to get the ball rolling on RP, the marines retreat.

I hope all of this made sense, it is midnight here and I'm tired. I have to wake up in time for classes tomorrow so I'll end my comment here. If you have questions, quote me.

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

100% agree with Snype on round lengths.

There's too much 'dead time' for a round to be short anymore and still have reasonable time to roleplay something that isn't the normal marine stuff.

[WinterClould]

I feel those feels Snype. I feel those feels hard. Even if you aren't an event character, just an RP character like CL or something, no one can devote attention to you sometimes because they need to be hyper focused on the speed of the round so they can try to win.

If we want good RP events then 2 hours to to short. We'd need much more time then that. Around 3 minimum. And I don't think the extra time is a bad thing. Are we playing 15 minute tdm or 30+ minute big team battle?

[ThePiachu]

I've played xeno
It's terrible
Like, all of it. The focus on stats is probably the worst part about it. They're so dull and braindead.

When you're designing a game, you have to keep the fun of both sides into consideration. To do that, you need to understand why playing both sides is fun and how a given change affects both sides. If you think that playing xeno is completely terrible, that's fine - don't play it, but also don't dismiss how people play it (unless you want to reimplement it from the grounds up to be fun in a different way - go ahead). If the game becomes unfun for one side, both sides will lose due to people not playing.

[Kesserline]

A change for the larvae bursts :

Why not coding it depending on the target value ?

Marine = 1 to 3, one being common, 2 being scarce, 3 being ultra rare burst.
Corporal to Ensign = 1 being scarce, 2 being common, 3 being scarce
SO and higher = 1 being rare, 2 being scarce, 3 being common.

Let's value the capturing, I agree on that. But due to the amount of baldies getting captured, or allowing captures by FFing and abandoning friendlies (not me, but as noticed on fights just next to me), it's hard to fight a 30+ xenos hive just because PFC Mc Baldie decided to not be able to release the safety on his weapon.

I don't mind the overtargeting on specific roles, I'm already used to it myself, and people rolling with specific roles will learn to be better by being more endangered. But let's not be punished with a 2 average larva burst on each random faceless PFC that goes captured silently.

Also, let's disminish the amount of monkeys, unless monkeys and furry hosts only yield a 1 larva burst only, because they are "weak" hosts, instead of tallhosts.

Again, fighting a 30+ hive feels really like Winter 2018 where latejoin larvae were first introduced (before being toned down) and fighting a 35ish xeno hive was commun, and roflstomping was a constant.

[Kesserline]

Dual posting, but separating ideas :

If Xeno pop remains unchanged.

Then, why not doubling Spec slots ?

QF EB was nerfed because only 9 to 13 marines were able to reach that loadout. That's what Spook told me. 9 to 13 marines were able to have more chance to carry the USCM.
Yet, we are allowing only 4 dudes, to reach Spec slots, on RNG basis.

If Xeno pop unchanged, reintegrate QF M41, or double Spec Roles with a buff to Req points to support the supply lines, especially when coupled with TC return, when it'll return.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

snip

Yes, furry hosts like monkey, farwa, ... only carry 1 larva each, no RNG whatsoever. The real scary thing here is the survivors. As humans, they can each carry up to 7 larva if the RNG wields it, and since you normally get 4-5 survivors in high pop, that's potentially 28-35 more larva for the hive (again, worst case scenario).

[Gnorse]

Yeah, if anything, cap survivors to one larva max. two if you're feeling generous.