April 2 constructing changes discussion

[Casany]

Though I don't think it's primarily because of the removal of the E-Grilles that gave the decline of the longevity of the FOB. FOB's were still standing strong even with it's removal. From my opinion, the longevity of a FOB all lies in the engineers themselves. But this doesn't stop from it being totally wrecked by crushers and the likes, which thankfully, have been "nerfed". Either way, FOB's all are dependent on the person who made it. With a new batch of rookies at this moment, they usually don't think ahead, since, they can't really anticipate much from their lack of experience. But experienced engineers however, knows the in's and out of everything, so they know what to fortify. Hence why some FOB's last and many don't.

Well, it's not just the players really. Many of the vets who used to main engineer have just stopped going engineer because the FOBs and engineers themselves have been nerfed to the ground. And since crushers can bust through basically any FOB that doesn't have four thick walls in 6 seconds, many people have just given up building advanced FOBs since all they really do is hold for 4 minutes so everyone can retreat.

[Karmac]

I absolutely have to agree with Casany on this, given how terrible FOB's are nowadays you're better off trying to hunt down xenos in the early game than get a proper FOB set up. There's never been more of an incentive for marines to play aggressively than this, but with the recent xeno changes and changes to wielding, we're being punished pretty hard for it.

[4thsurviver]

Well, it's not just the players really. Many of the vets who used to main engineer have just stopped going engineer because the FOBs and engineers themselves have been nerfed to the ground. And since crushers can bust through basically any FOB that doesn't have four thick walls in 6 seconds, many people have just given up building advanced FOBs since all they really do is hold for 4 minutes so everyone can retreat.

I think that this is as detrimental to the Xenos as it is to the Marines. The faster the the FOB is destroyed the faster Marines will run to the ship. It doesn't matter if they have 10 marines or 100 if they have no FOB to hold they will always run to the ship. The longer it takes the FOB to be breached the more marines can be picked off through attrition. Meaning Xenos don't need to fight 70 marines on the ship every round because they took the FOB in one assault.

Then again when marines retreat to the ship early they have more opportunities to RP and enjoy the rec areas while waiting for the Xenos decide they are strong enough to take the ship.

[Rahlzel]

Then again when marines retreat to the ship early they have more opportunities to RP and enjoy the rec areas while waiting for the Xenos decide they are strong enough to take the ship.

There is one fundamental issue with this, however, which is that our goal is to keep marines planet-side and fighting. This is aided by an intentional attempt at a 99% win rate for Xenos when they crash into the ship. In some cases marines will have time to self destruct it and in most cases evacuate and/or send a distress beacon, but otherwise they're most likely going to lose the round if they lose the planet.

It's for this reason and others stated above that we need to buff barricades, and will do so soon™. Thanks to Nicboone, we already have a few new sprites ready for them so it's in-progress, and on multiple occasions I've linked this topic to the team in order to get them on the same page with how players are feeling about the current state of defenses and squad engineers.

[Swagile]

There's a problem when we have 100 + players and I join 1 hour in to seeing the Combat Engineer role having at least one or two slots open almost every other game.

Thats just a note towards the devs who made these changes; realism isn't always fun or good for balancing the game and this is a clear showing of it.

Karmac, myself, and a few other people who mained and were good at Engineer (some I don't know the ckeys of or just know their ckey but not name) do not play Engineer at all or just once in a blue moon for the nostalgia of it due to how terrible the role has been nerfed. You no longer FEEL like you are making a difference with your barricades.

Its why I moved to maining Combat Medic; at least I feel like I am doing something to stop the xenos by stopping the tide of injured people (though even that is being nerfed by Crusher charges giving 2 fractures, broken bones, or even delimbing in one charge on a fully healthy marine).

[NoahKirchner]

A big part of combat engineer was clever use of your materials. Cannibalizing other areas of your defenses, weakening them to make it harder for the xenos to go through the front.

This also made xeno a lot more fun, as you weren't always able to attack the marines head on. Sometimes you had to flank, or weaken them with boilers, send up small t1s to damage their defenses a little bit, pull back the t1s and continue to pepper with boilers. Removing this push and pull, and these options from the marines really makes it a lot less engaging, a lot less *deep* on both sides.

I think it would be better to revert plasteel changes, have them still be strong, maybe have sandbags replace metal tables as that sort of auxiliary defense, and bring down the wall deconstruction to 3 steps instead of 1 less than reinforced walls. Until then, I can't even bring myself to play the game tbh. It's very boring and cookie cutter.

[KingKire]

Well, i stopped playing engineer and went into research since i felt it was the best way to influence the round non-combat wise. but i've been playing less in general. I would like to go back to engineering but the last time i took a run at it a few weeks back, aliens were pretty powerful and it was pretty boring being an engineer.

imo, i think i felt it was a little boring due to standing still and not really having too much movement...i think a little too much standing still while doing the same click routine. i dont know how to describe that... hmmm. anywho, not much time. best to summerize as engineers lacking depth of gameplay vs. the sheer amount of time you need to invest in a game to get rewarded for it. (building a decent FOB takes sooo long vs. the time it takes to destroy it, and most of that time is reallly really boring. These are old opinions of course since i last played engineer some time back before i switched to research and medical. )


hmmm yah. engineering feels like a chore i guess compared to the old style haha/ tldr.