Mid-Late game Specialists, Medics and Engineers

[Mycroft Macarthur]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): a change to the way the game sorts out how jobs are filled would enable people who join later in the game to have roles other then just "Standard Marine"

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): marines would have an easier time fielding a more varied force at all stages of the game and critical roles would be filled more often

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): i've noticed something kind of weird about the current build of the game, a problem which didn't exist as much in the pre alpha since back then almost all jobs were assigned and most specialty equipment we have now, did not exist or could be acquired and used by almost everyone (until it ran out whereupon no one could have any)

see when a round first starts out and the marine force is pretty large our force has a pretty decent mix, we have a few specialists per squad, engineers, doctors and medics...almost every role is always filled to at least SOME extent even if not the maximum but standard marines still make up the vast majority of our force but thats okay because even in real life that tends to be how its supposed to be.

rounds have a tendency to go on longer in the current map then they did in the nostromo however.

what this means is that marines are dying in droves, even when marines win they're still dying all over the fucking place, even if they WERENT dying then shit comes up and they have to leave or attend to real life matters or bugs force them to leave and not come back till WAY later, either way by the middle part of the game crucial roles onboard either the sulaco itself or in the squad makeup are no longer being filled, holes exist in the roster that need to be plugged.

however late joiners currently can NOT fill the roles of those who have died or logged out, unless the job had never been filled to maximum capacity to start with the only choice for them is to become standard marines even though there actually are tons of slots free in other parts of the ships crew and in their given squads itself, what this means is mid to late game there are no specialists to help either with massive enemy numbers, the near infinite enemy fortifications or to provide their aid against powerful high tier aliens, there are no doctors to treat the wounded who are STILL coming in and needing treatment, there are no engineers so the supermatter is either not generating power or about to explode and the marines have had to break into cargo because the guys who SHOULD be working there have all vanished and no one is handing out the supplies that the marines need.

why is that?

dont get me wrong, i agree that we must have a strict limit on how many members of given roles there should be, doctors for example max out at four or five (counting the CMO and researcher) but due to the medbay layout and the way the wounded tend to come we almost never need more then two, we obviously cant have more then a set number of specialists because if EVERYONE was one then the balancing would go to shit but if for example, we were only allowed to have a total of 8 specialists, and three died and four logged out....then that doesn't mean we have eight specialists, that means we have ONE specialist and seven slots have opened for jobs we happen to NEED.

you can try your luck at getting reassigned but scream over that radio all you want, it probably wont happen, all the bridge officers are busy providing fire support, overwatch and more for the men on the surface and if they stop what they are doing to start changing ID's then the marines no longer have a line of communication between themselves and the sulaco, nevermind needing the shuttle or supply call ins, in pre alpha you could always just climb over the tables or break in and there'd be say a 50% chance of there being an ID you can use to assign yourself but since assigning people is handled by the game there is almost never an ID near the machine and for some reason whenever the bridge officers SSD it can be a gigantic bitch to find their bodies again so you cant just take it off them (complicated by the fact that the bridge officers actually have shit to do now so they log out less and less often compared to pre alpha)

i feel that this part of the code should be changed so that it keeps track of which jobs have been filled and whether or not members of those jobs have died or logged out, in which case it can open a slot back up so late joiners can fill the role of whoever happened to die or log out, this will make marines much more bearable and balanced in longer games (it seems like on average your typical round in CM lasts 2-3 hours compared to the 1-2 of most other servers)

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): this would be a purely code issue

[DesFrSpace]

+1 I'd like if Maintenance drone would pull people to the Sleeper.

[HalfdeadKiller]

+1 I would like for job slots to open up similarly to larva, if a player has died. If they are SSD, stick them in the cryo sleepers. If they have died, and have stood dead for 15-30+ minutes, open up the job slot.

[DesFrSpace]

Since there is no Lo Lo, that make sense, and would be useful for future improvement.

[LordeKilly]

"Echo Squad, code color of [White?], for all you late game nerds." +1

[Lostmixup]

In all seriousness, something NEEDS to be done about only being able to spawn in as a marine after the initial spawn. It makes joining late a major pain for people like myself who prefer to play more sulaco based roles.