Ice's demo'd features

[BobatNight]

Well we just got off a pretty dreadful round of Ice and unfortunately the crap on the planet over-shadowed some neato' shit Awan was testing out.

CiC had a Sensor array on the planet that allowed us to see Xenos position that I found extremely useful. The only stipulation was it needed protected by marines who annoyingly enough seemed to break it on several occasions.

Req was also bursting with supplies that we couldn't utilize fast enough but it didn't seem to have an over-all effect on the siege attrition.

Not sure what the planned implement for the sensor array is but I'd definitely be willing to spend RO points to have 1 of these or complete objectives to have access to it.

It's too bad that planetside was just.. demoralizing for anyone involved with the FF bordering on grief.

[Boersgard]

It's too bad that planetside was just.. demoralizing for anyone involved with the FF bordering on grief.

Lessons learned from that round:

1. Marines don't know how to use claymores
2. It doesn't matter how many infinite points you give marines for requisitions, cades, weapons, attachments, etc. they still get stomped by mutator xenos; which speaks to fundamental gameplay design issues



And my opinion on those fundamental design issues:

1. Marines don't do enough damage individually; group firing doesn't work 9/10 times because of FF/LoS blocking: The reality is that most of the time only 1-2 marines are actually landing hits on an alien at any given time, while alien hitpoints and speed are seemingly balanced around getting shot by 4-6 marines instead. The only thing enabling kills for marines come from explosive/shotgun stuns and followup - if a xeno isn't stunned or you aren't doing alpha strike damage, you will never kill it.

2. Xenos have too many stuns spread across too many castes which last too long/enable stunlocking, and get really bad in conjunction with too high DPS. If a xeno can stunlock, it shouldn't be able to do a lot of damage. Xenos that can do a lot of damage, shouldn't be able to stunlock. This encourages more cooperation on the xeno side, helps differentiate and specialize xenos, and keeps the game from being absolutely frustrating as a marine who gets tackled by a lurker and killed/requiring surgery in just 4 swipes.

3. Xenos have too many opportunities to get out of a poor play/overcommittment on attacks, to the point of absurdity where there's zero fear of charging into the middle of 10 marines to slice or facehug someone before running away because you know, short of a lucky shotgun, or explosive, you are in zero danger of actually dying.

4. Multiburst gives xeno teams who play poorly way too many chances to recover, and enable xeno teams playing well to absolutely curbstomp. Two or three chestbursters can give 10+ larva and literally singlehandedly turn a game around from a marine win to a loss. The vast majority of bursts need to be in the 1-2 larva range, with rare ones being 3. Xenos need to start playing to capture and not kill marines - something they all do way too much (I can't even begin to count the number of times I've grabbed a marine, dragged him off, and some dipshit lurker/runner's tagged along JUST to kill him - it happens easily 1/4th the time I've grabbed someone) as there is literally no pressure on xenos to actually capture marines in order to win.

[Audi_Gzz]

Mutators weren't even the problem that round tbh. There was 4 engies who were trying to fix up what 5+ other engies were fucking up on. Lou,Heinz,Negus,Alan Drigger. The other engies kept placing claymores behind cades. Building sandbag autism forts. ETC etc. This was nothing about mutators we could've had a great FOB but 5+ engies kept fucking up what the other engies were fixing. It was annoying to the point like 3 of us were about to cryo. I understand being new but we kept telling the engies don't do this,this, and this. And they did those things, it was very stressful lol.

[Boersgard]

There wasn't anything about any of the cades that was so stressful it was worth cryoing over. I mean, the little sandbag 1-tile wide tunnel out of LZ1 was full-retard sure, but that got dismantled pretty quickly, and the vast majority of the rest of the cades were livable.

The good parts of the cades dropped just as fast as the shitty parts. All xenos needed was some gas and that was it, the entire line dropped (helped a TON by so many marines being unable to fire over multiple cades). Cade placement all the way from bar to LZ1 hardly provided any respite despite being pure autismfuel, and a lot of the problems with claymores within cade boxes came from the claymores being placed first, and then someone building cades further up, containerizing the mines. The rest of the problem with claymores then stemmed from marines being unfamiliar with them, and the vast majority coming down to FOB while the LZ was starting to get assaulted, so there wasn't much opportunity to spread them out anywhere outside the FOB.

[MedicInDisquise]

I never heard about the Sensor Array (IC or OOC), but then again there was a lot of problems on the ground and in the ship. Our SO was in and out the entire time with a lot of vague orders because of the RO's BE, revival, and second BE (?) so we never got any specific information. I was a Charlie, if it matters. Regardless, this sounds like a really cool feature and would definitely be worth maintenance on bigger maps like Ice and Trijent (and a communicative command, of course). It might be worth another test with hopefully a less chaotic and crazy round.

This is completely off topic, but I mostly agree with him. Right now Xenos just feel borderline invincible, with anything short of explosives, fires, and PB shottys doing any damage or stun to them. I've seen multiple Xenos outright survive OBs and CAS fire, to the point of absurdity.

[BobatNight]

Haha to clarify the ship issues.
I BE'd the RO
RO was revived and robusted me in CiC
We were both defibbed
I BE'd him again
BE'd the doctor that treated him when he was ordered to be incinerated

RO and Doctor were both good sports about it and I hope they enjoyed themselves.

Back on topic more the sensor array was honestly great and I hope more people get the chance to test CiC with it. Awan has had some great ideas lately and I hope he keeps rolling them out.

[Ttly]

Marines were retarded and left plasteel cades open.
PFCs were the ones that placed the sandbag cades, as a Bravo on that round I can attest to that.

Oh also there was one BIG CHAIN EXPLOSION OF CLAYMORE that basically fucked the whole marine side.

[FGRSentinel]

The main issue is that there was a specific mix of supplies that req seemed to be getting: most of what I saw/heard about was either Metal or claymores. I know about 140+ mines were dropped via Alamo near the end, which was insane. If Req got more attachments/weapons/currently irreplaceable equipment instead of building materials and explosives or the Dropship fabricator had points boosted like that, it'd probably have resulted in a different outcome, at least on the surface.

[awan]

So, the sensor tower is 100% working on Desert Dam.
I want to add it to ice colony as well (in another location then I spawned it in now.)
The reason I want it on ice is because it forces the aliens to go up.
If the aliens try to stay downstairs the marines will know their exact locations.

For the req thing here is a list of what I send:
1. About 600 flares.
2. About 3000 metal sheets
3. 8 sentry guns.
4. 250 claymores.
5. 1000 sandbags.
6. 8 rangefinders.
7. A mortar + 2 mortar crates
8. 100 rations
9. 20 inc mags.
10 4000 ap rounds
11 20000 normal rounds.
12 4000 smg ap rounds
13 20000 normal smg rounds
14 1000 slugs
15 1000 buckshot.
16 Over 100 frags.
17 over 100 HE
18 100 training grenades.
19 1800 plasteel sheets.
20 4 sg powerpacks.
The above is only part of the list what I send.
I wanted to send absurd amounts and it turns out nothing was being sent down at all.
I am not going into why I wanted to test this but it did give me usefull information.
I did not spawn the above in all at once it came in waves.

[BobatNight]

Yeah it was a messy round for that RO attempt, poor Henrik was doing his best back there.

[NethIafins]

Too bad desert dam keeps derping

Also, lesson learned, don't test shit on ice

[FGRSentinel]

Yeah it was a messy round for that RO attempt, poor Henrik was doing his best back there.

The dropship was another bottleneck for req supplies since the way a lot of the supplies were received meant you couldn't compress them into a single container (the claymores were in the kinds of containers you find around the hangar and therefore had to be sent down unopened due to a lack of standard crates, taking up a ton of space on the Alamo), the unwillingness of Marines to actually assist in unloading planetside on at least one drop, and the fact that on the first claymore delivery someone crowbared the containers open and forced me to unload the individual boxes of claymores (at least ten) alone.

[KingKire]

I wanted to send absurd amounts and it turns out nothing was being sent down at all.
I am not going into why I wanted to test this but it did give me usefull information.
I did not spawn the above in all at once it came in waves.

Shooot, If y'all wanted to know that Req doesnt do their job half the time, just gotta ask any of the RO mains. We'll tell you straight up we dont send supplies and do our job. Requistions is where they send cadets who barely qualified into an officer, and marines who barely qualified into marines. Its the most real life game feature ever. /s

But seriously, its hard as heck to send supplies down to the front with any sort of reliability.

[FGRSentinel]

Yeah, Req's in a spot where it's too far away from the Hangar to easily transport large numbers of crates/boxes there, but it also can't send down supplies through drops if nobody uses tacticals/rangefinders to get coordinates and they don't have a normal crate to ship things down in. That round, they weren't getting many standard crates, so they weren't able to do supply drops... but they also had to haul every single container individually to the Alamo, which slowed the entire process down. The only real workaround for these issues (short of having every wave of supplies include 1-2 empty crates to dump everything into) is for a ton of idle shipside roles (such as MPs and MTs) to assist in mass-transport of supplies to Alamo, then for Marines to actually help unload.

[Boersgard]

Yeah, Req's in a spot where it's too far away from the Hangar to easily transport large numbers of crates/boxes there, but it also can't send down supplies through drops if nobody uses tacticals/rangefinders to get coordinates and they don't have a normal crate to ship things down in. That round, they weren't getting many standard crates, so they weren't able to do supply drops... but they also had to haul every single container individually to the Alamo, which slowed the entire process down. The only real workaround for these issues (short of having every wave of supplies include 1-2 empty crates to dump everything into) is for a ton of idle shipside roles (such as MPs and MTs) to assist in mass-transport of supplies to Alamo, then for Marines to actually help unload.

Sounds like Requisitions needs a transport cart.

[BobatNight]

There's already the power-loader but it's not really much more effective than pushing and pulling a crate.

[FGRSentinel]

Req's power loader is debatable in its usefulness. On one hand, you can move slightly faster than a human pulling a crate in it while carrying two crates, but on the other you don't move much faster in that situation and you move much slower (unless you're an MT or someone else with a high skill with it) than a human who's simply running down the hall. In the end, unless you get people with high power loader skills to help, you're actually WASTING more time using the power loader than you save with it.

[Ttly]

Remember when there used to be an elevator in the middle of hangar?
It was there before tank bay update, got used for tank bay when that got added, and got removed along with the tank bay for some reason and now we got a lame ass hangar with nothing on the middle.
So yes, bring that back but this time for cargo and you could solve a lot of problem.

[BobatNight]

Remember when there used to be an elevator in the middle of hangar?
It was there before tank bay update, got used for tank bay when that got added, and got removed along with the tank bay for some reason and now we got a lame ass hangar with nothing on the middle.
So yes, bring that back but this time for cargo and you could solve a lot of problem.

That's actually a pretty neat idea.

[spookydonut]

middle of hangar elevator was added for tank, i put it in ahead of tank release to make tank addition more stealthy per nic's wishes.

[Maxim Inc]

You can use the REQ wheelchair and a fire extinguisher to propel yourself across great distances while pulling a crate.

[Survivor]

Remember when there used to be an elevator in the middle of hangar?
It was there before tank bay update, got used for tank bay when that got added, and got removed along with the tank bay for some reason and now we got a lame ass hangar with nothing on the middle.
So yes, bring that back but this time for cargo and you could solve a lot of problem.

I miss that tank bay. It was a fun spot