Why don't the Marines Push more? (A discussion to help development)

[apophis775]

Firstly, some quick rules:

THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION THREAD. Don't say things like "they should get this new weapon". If you think weapons are inadequate, then say that, but I want to keep this focused on what we can change with the CURRENT game, to encourage marines onto the offensive, since i see SO MANY GAMES, where if the marines weren't scared to push, they'd win.

Last game, 20+ marines retreated from 4 aliens.

So, my hope, is that by getting some feedback on what makes people not want to push, we'll be able to make some adjustments to the gameplay.

[Stalin]

So, my hope, is that by getting some feedback on what makes people not want to push, we'll be able to make some adjustments to the gameplay.

I think they key reason for the reluctance to push would be because no marine sees themselves as a pawn in a game of chess, but rather the star of the show. As a result, they'd be happy to let other people die and leave themselves to hide in the corner until the retreat is called (ring a bell with the 5:1 ratio of marines to aliens you spoke of?). I've seen people speaking in minichat about how robust they are, that they only die to friendly fire, that they always last to the end of the round, but I think it's more the fact that they don't fight at all, or put themselves at risk for the good of the round. I think that if alien gameplay were more interesting in some manner (I have no clue), people wouldn't be so reluctant to be captured as a marine. I remember on my first days here that people complained in OOC about pajamarines running straight to the alien hive to be captured! What happened?
Aside from that, often when I used to play, I'd go and move to a location and there'd be a significant risk of an alien running up to me, dropping a facehugger, and then running back off. You could put two bullets in the alien in that time, hardly damaging it, and it'd have knocked you out assuming your helmet was already broken. This problem is only made worse by the fact that carriers can lob facehuggers at you, meaning they don't even have to walk up to you to disable you.
Oh, and the map doesn't encourage fast gameplay at all. It's come to the point where people seem to have forgotten what the Aliens franchise was founded on: demonic creatures hunting people down in enclosed spaces. Look at Alien Isolation. It'd lose any tension if it was set in an open area, where there are plenty of areas to hide. In Alien and Aliens, all the scenes take place in narrow and enclosed areas. I don't mean to discredit the map makers, but they're ignoring the basis of the franchise.

[sicktrigger]

Marine assaults are just generally more risky than xeno assaults. You have to constantly worry about aliens popping out from the darkness to fling huggers at you.

Assaulting as a xeno doesn't really come with any risks if you're careful enough. The only thing that can really surprise you is a sniper bullet from off-screen, which is unlikely to kill you.

[Voldirs]

Marines dont have NVGs
Marines are prone to huggers, which stun for really long time
Marines are prone to dire injuries aka broken/missing limbs
Marines are prone to friendly fire.
Marines are REALLY WEAK when fighting in narrow caves because only 2-3 marines can fire
Marines are slower than hunter castes.
Marines cant scout in numbers lower than 3.
Marines cant repair helmets.
OVERALL marines cant fight for a long time in offensive

But marines got only orbitals, GLs and sadars. They are really effective in making offensive.
But marines got A LOT of things that are useful in defence aka mines, barricades, turrets and supply beacons.
The best tactic for marines in my opinion is to set FOB and go on short patrols or skirmishes to slowly diminish alien's numbers/hosts until the moment when aliens themselves are forced to turtle. Blitzkrieg just doesnt work against aliens.

[Derpislav]

What discourages ME from pushing more:
1. Carriers and runners dropping huggers are instant death - while it was said many times that there will be no insta-kill weapons in the game to keep it fun.
2. You can get broken bones from just one bullet or from few seconds of combat with a xeno, and it takes you out of the round for - under ideal circumstances, that is, no dropship waiting time and very competent doctors waiting in the hanger - seven minutes at the very, never happening, least. Assuming you ever get to the dropship alive with these fractures.
3. Lack of co-ordination and covering each other. Everyone just goes into the hive at full speed, gets a papercut on their pinky and retreats at full speed to the FoB.


EDIT: Don't treat as 1 and 2 as "I don't like dying". If a ravager charges at me and decapitates me in one slash, fair game, my own fault for not GTFOing at the sight of a mad, crimson-red godzilla. I just really hate the sinking feeling of getting hugged without any effort or watching myself die from a single fracture from accidental FF.

[northcote4]

What's said above seems to cover it fairly well, I think.

One issue I've noticed, personally, is that there's that element of marines being afraid of dying. They don't want to risk being 'unrobust', being forced to wait for medical treatment, or anything in between.

Seems to me that those players who don't enjoy playing as aliens don't want to risk the possibility of never being cloned, or even then, the wait-times involved with either cloning or proper medical treatment.


Addit: Going off of what Stalin said, the map condition may be a factor. While I wasn't there, I've heard that the prison colony map was a lot more claustrophobic, and that somehow promoted more fast-placed gameplay compared to the usual on Lazarus and the Manor maps. Granted, that may have simply been due to the playerbase on at the time.

[somhuan]

I've not played a huge amount, but in my mind it comes down to a few main reasons.
One: The marines willing to attack will do so as soon as possible, usually before it is a good chance to attack, removing them from the round early via facehugger.
Two: the presence of weeds alone slows down marines and makes aliens heal. This very much makes enemy territory ENEMY TERRITORY. All the methods to clear it require a lot of manpower or resources, too.
and Three: You can kill a ludicrous amount of aliens in the proper defense at times, and people want to replicate the huge payoffs that come when defensive tactics are successful.

Basically, as rounds go on, marines are naturally selected towards the defensive type of player on the marine side, wheras on the alien side offensive players get into the game again and again and again.

[Kreydis]

FoB. Literally that, why move to an area where your orbital stikes can't hit (Also people don't understand the XY+- system.) and risk losing 1/2 of your team before you even reach the start of the area because 90% of standards don't know how to stay within line of site of at least 1 other person.

[Lostmixup]

Maine weapons don't have enough punch to be viable to push with usually. A squad of xenos will almost always win out again a squad of marines. The xenos just tank bullets and drop facehuggers. Bullets mean nothing to them.

*I mean, marines are scared as all hell to push the aliens purely because all it takes is about 4 aliens to bring down a group of like 5-10 marines. Especially if there's a few T3s in there (crusher). Aliens can be taken out with proper defenses, but in a war of attrition most of the time the marines come out losing.

[TopHatPenguin]

Marines normally land and setup an Fob in the nexus, after that some marines get captured etc, etc. It then comes down to "Right we, the marines need to push into the alien base and rescue our marines! Glory!!!"

Then 20 minutes down the line the marines arrive at the base and almost every round the squad that is sent in for the assault is all either captured or killed after about maybe an hour or less then that into the round, sometimes some marines can be lucky enough to escape. After that first assault nobody wants to assault the alien base due to how the previous assault failed horribly.

On another note when it comes to assaults with the new update, it makes it basically suicide as by the time marines actively get there for the first assault there will already be a bunch of T3's ready to take out a squad in minutes, along with a horde of t2's and of course the queen which can stun the squad for enough time that most if not all are killed or infected.

Map conditions as posted above also plays a vital role because if there is a choke point (Just any tight spaces mainly) with aliens i guarantee marines will try and push but they will just get tackled,infected then dragged off into the depths of hell, another thing is that if a queen or a crusher is at a choke point you are most likely not going to be able to get through it due to their stuns, which all the other aliens around are waiting to happen so they can collect the goodies which in this case are the marines.

The long haul back to the Sulaco if you are injured and the whole surgery process in general is quite a long time just to get back out onto the field and by that time the marines might have already packed up shop and gone back to the Sulaco is also a issue.Don't get me wrong have surgery by a doctor is fine but in most cases it takes 30 minutes-40 minutes depending on what injuries you've had etc which also makes it so that marine players would rather stay out of assaulting somewhere unless there is a guarantee that it will work or that they themselves believe that the plan will work, if they don't have either of those things turtiling happens and we all know how that song and dance goes.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention how basically every round drama unfolds in the command structure either leading to a mutiny, All command SSD or One poor command staff member doing all the work while the others go off somewhere. All of that then adds up to make the marines on the ground basically have no supplies or if they are lucky they will get a squad marine to go up and get some.

These are just some broad overall things i have noticed while playing/observing.

[Pillow]

I noticed that in, what I assume was the latest update, by the time marines actually got to the surface there were already several T3s that basically instantly destroyed moral. On top of that I have noticed both as commander and as an observer that at least one SL each round usually is rather belligerent to the Commander if they order anything risky for their squad, now I get that they would want to protect their people but its a but excessive. For example when I played as commander I ordered alpha squad to attach one of its engineers to another squad as the compositions of the various squads was less than optimal. The alpha refused to do so along with their entire squad. Such to the point that I had to entirely reissue instructions for all marines (again the mix in the squads was far from optimal.
tl;dr Marines really don't listen to commands well let alone cooperate and aliens get T3s far too quickly in my opinion.

[Mac]

There are lots of good reasons stated. I will echo communication, face hugger abuse, and the quickness of t3s making it even worse now. I don't mind going out, but it's so frustrating to have a carrier down several marines and the t3s drag the marines off before they can be killed. If someone is downed by a hugger it's often a case of overwhelming odds where marines don't bother to drag friendlies away because of all the aliens bearing down. As it is, aliens have an easy way to stun which is presumably balanced by the ranged weaponry, but the ranged weaponry also hurts the marines and can sometimes hurt the marines more than aliens do.

It's not any one issue but it's a multitude of issues and many people have listed them here.

[RadiantFlash]

As Pillow said, getting a marine squad to listen to there squad leader, let alone the commander, is nigh impossible unless you've got good players. Add in that there is rarely a game without command dying or getting into conflict with other parts of the sulaco/liason or a mutiny, and logistics becomes hell. Marines can't push out without a supply chain of supply drops. Not effectively anyway.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

"The enemy strikes when you're not ready or when they are."

[Boltersam]

Mostly, it's the fact that the marines KNOW this is a game, not a real military. They don't have the mindset that this IS a military operation, and you are TRAINED to follow orders, you're not the badass hero from an action movie, you're just another faceless soldier sent to die in wars between corporations, counter-terrorism, and fighting xenomorphs/predators.

You will die, soldiers accept that, players don't want to lose their unique time as a marine, so most are cowards.

[Lostmixup]

T3's really are everywhere by mid-round.

[Toroic]

I think the reason marines don't push is a systemic issue related to marine command generally being inefficient, no doctor going down to the FoB to provide on-site care, and general chucklefuckery.

Marines didn't push any more often when xenos took longer to evolve, either.

Contrary to what has been said here, bullets hurt xenos quite heavily, but marines rarely can finish the xeno off as chasing into the darkness is a poor choice.

So what we end up with is marines who have little medical or supply support, a lot of wasted time and dead weight, trying to put together an offensive push.

[Arachnidnexus]

Without objectives it's a war of attrition. A marine push can result in a number of xeno kills, but if marines get captured they've effectively lost combat strength that they cannot easily regain, especially if they lose SLs, specialist weapons, orbital beacons, sentries, etc. while xenos have a rather safe way of recovering T3s.

Bullets do hurt a lot, but weeds and darkness combine to make quite potent retreat options, and marines understandably don't want to deal with clearing weeds all over the map whenever they want to make an advance. Also, clearing resin structures in the hive isn't possible with incinerators or grenades so marines either have to waste M41 ammo or get into melee range to cut resin structures down which puts them in an awkward situation for screeches, etc. Well-built hives can sometimes defeat a marine advance by just fatiguing them.

[Telegnats]

It's easy for aliens to fall back and have a good chance of *not* dying. Marine's don't have that luxury. If they go out of their cover, the chances of them getting captured/killed is very, very high. No one wants to go into a situation where the odds are stacked against them, so they don't go out. Also, them being able to heal just by standing on weeds means they don't even have to fall back very far to get back to 100%.

Nevermind the fact that communcation in SS13 is pretty difficult, and getting cloned in the mid to late round is a far shot, so there's no coming back if you happen to die. Hell, a broken bone can happen from 1 swipe/bullet and that's it, you're probably done for the rest of the round.

They don't even know how many marines are left half the time, or aliens for that matter.

They don't have access to equipment if they lose guns or helmets or whatever else.

their main method of defense can be wrecked by one ravager which shows up pretty early in the game and is *very* difficult to kill - actually the majority of aliens are difficult to kill and marines are easy to kill. All it takes is them getting unlucky, or a little bit of lag, and you're out of the game as a marine for the next hour or so.

Losing their weapons is pretty easy - in fact losing equipment in general is easy. And again, there's no easy way to get them back either.

Even if you did happen to get aliens on the run, it's easy to lose your friends when you're following and just one or two huggers means you're done for.

TLDR; It's easy for marines to die, going out of cover means you're probably going to die, and no one wants to sit the rest of the round as a ghost.

[Wickedtemp]

One recent round we were down to the Queen, a Hunter and a Sentinel. And the marines were doing quite well, taking minimal damage because if the Xeno's went out to attack, we'd die.

They retreated. I don't even fucking know why. They weren't really injured, surely they had ammo still, most of their helmets were intact, they were literally about to kill us all. But they retreated.

So, how to stop marines from retreating? Their weapons are easily strong enough to kill xenos, this is evident. If there aren't weeds around, marines can take down a T3 easily enough.

Maybe have command tell them to attack and maybe not call for a retreat until there's no other option? They have access to the SL helmets and they have access to Comms, they have ways of finding out how the marines are handling the assault.

So use them. Use the fucking suit sensors. Use the overwatch shit, the SL cameras and Comms, really most of this is just Marines not communicating and using what they have.

Marines don't need a weapon buff, except for the service pistol that's basically useless, increase fire rate or something on that. What they need is to just use what they're given.

[Kreydis]

Maybe have command tell them to attack and maybe not call for a retreat until there's no other option? They have access to the SL helmets and they have access to Comms, they have ways of finding out how the marines are handling the assault.

Apop literally gave CC messages saying that and they still ran. I know of like 6 players I'd trust to come with me in a charge. everyone else on the server has limited experience and for the most part sits behind barricades and then runs when 1 person gets hugged instead of helping them.

[LordeKilly]

They don't push because they don't know what is ahead. For all they know there could be 3 ravagers waiting inside ready to chop them up with a maze of huggers.

[Disco Dalek]

The things that I've seen stall an offensive more than anything are queen stuns and carrier hugger spam. The second you see a queen rounding a corner, you're stunned and hugged if there are even one or two other aliens within sight. I've seen entire squads instantly wiped out by this. Then you have the problem of rib and skull fractures. Friendly fire and alien slashing ensures that a massive number of marines will get these injuries throughout the round. I've seen countless marines decide they'd rather not spend ten to twenty minutes getting fixed up back at the ship and just end up slowing down the offensive when they collapse from internal injuries during the middle of an assault. That's why I love the medbay in the new prison map so much. It completely cuts out the need to return to the Sulaco if it can be protected.

[Wickedtemp]

If they ignore the CC messages then they really aren't following orders, which is the point of playing Marine. Marines follow orders from the CO and especially from CC, while Xeno's follow orders from the Queen.

[Toroic]

The real problem is that things are balanced mechanically between xeno and marine, and if people played this server as a team vs team game, win rates would be a lot closer.

As it stands, xeno team is generally 90% playing to win. Maybe 50% of the marine team does.