Saving time pre-brief - attachment vending machines

[misto]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): put several vending machines (4? 6? 8?) in preprooms that give attachments instead of the time wasting round start ro lineup

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): saves time for everyone at round start, lets ro and ct get to work on other tasks sooner, lets briefings happen sooner. this may have teething problems in the first couple of rounds it is introduced as players adjust their roundstart routines, but overall i feel this will save time over having marines line up at ro and receive goodies ONE BY ONE (or two by two, if both lines are open)

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): marines are trusted to dress and equip themselves in almost all other ways, why not this? put several vending machines in prep that they can visit and use just like the rest of their uniform, weapon and equipment vendors

worried about dirty marines making super-guns by vending out tons of attachments? don't be! because the vending machine must first have your id swiped, giving enough credit for 2 attachments. or, if a squad leader id is swiped, credit for 3 attachments.

worried about dirty marines hacking the machines to steal more attachments? don't be! just make the machines unhackable and make them drop nothing if destroyed or dismantled

worried that dirty marines will snatch each others ids and attachments in this anarchic environment? that's for the mps to handle, just like they currently handle roughhousing and theft in the ro lines

worried that this will make the orderable attachment boxes never bought, and that is somehow a big deal to you? the numbers of attachments in the vendors can be adjusted so that pickings can get slim eventually, don't sweat it.

are you an ro or ct who feels sad that marines might not be begging you for treats for 20 minutes at the start of every round? you can ask to retain control over some specialty items like machetes and scabbards and webbings and stuff, and you always have the orderable attachments too, so they may still come crawling to you LATER in the round once the squad prep rooms have been emptied of attachments

do you feel like this robs ro and ct of a critical role? please think up better roles for them to perform rather than an artificially lengthy and unnecessary process like the current roundstart attachments begging

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): you already have some basic systems in place for limiting items from vending machines thru engi tokens and specialist tokens in their vendors. instead of the coin slot token system, make it respond to id swipe. remember, 1 id swipe = 2 attachment credits, 1 squad lead id swipe = 3 credits, CANNOT swipe the same id twice

and remember! once the id is swiped once at ANY machine, its credits must be used up! no letting them swipe them across multiple vending machines for more and more attachments, the greedy pigs!

[TehSpoderman]

-1 This removes one of the main points of RO and CT

[Kerek]

-1, this would give cargo nothing to do, and it would just promote a food rush type thing with attachments. Better the way it is.

[misto]

if the main point of cargo is a timewasting exercise that could be handled more simply in a different fashion, then cargo badly needs improvements

"food rush" is also caused by the terrible layout of the food vendor machines in the cafeterias, and i hope that these vending machines would be sensibly placed and spaced out a bit. these are all problems that can be solved instead of sticking to bad ways out of tradition

[Kerek]

They order special weapons, order ammo, handle supply drops, order drugs, but they need the filler at the beginning of the round. This would just cause a rush for unga attachments that I personally wouldn't like to see.

[misto]

did you read my post fully? or did you just reply in 20seconds out of habit? did you recognize that your id gets you 2 attachment credits? there is no mega rush for unga attachments, you pick your two and youre DONE.

if they need the filler in the beginning of the round, and you acknowledge this as filler, you openly recognize that it is meaningless empty filler, then give them more points at round start so they can actually fill MEANINGFUL ORDERS. would you like me to make a thread suggesting it

[Kerek]

I read your suggestion and I disliked every bit of it. I quite like the req. lines and have an opinion. There would be a shoving rush for the attachments because baldies NEED their burstfires and chargers, it doesn't take too long as long as the number of marines isn't too bad and it gives medics and engineers the time they need to prepare their gear.

My opinion still stands and you don't have to act in a negative way to a simple minus one. If you have ever seen the Marine Food Vendor rush at the beginning of the round then you couldn't imagine the nastiness I can see with attachment vendors inside of a prep room.

[MrJJJ]

You do know what was attachments thing and briefing meant to do right?

To give a IC excuse for marines not to instantly rush the planet, on highpop attachments may take as well as nearly half a hour, if there was no attachments or they had vendors in their preprooms, imagine how quick would they get on the ground and pummel xenos on Ice and Red, who have yet to even get a single mature T2?

Hell, even on LV this still gives them a VERY LONG TIME to set up and be bored and destroy all tunnels, and nearly 95% rescue survivors, even if you kill them they can just revive them.

[Kerek]

Also what J said.

[misto]

scared of pushing and shove?

then space out the vendors more so they dont shove each other so much.

this goes for the cafeteria and these proposed vendors

theres tons of unused space, all kinds of dumb ass meeting rooms and bunk rooms, the almayer is not hurting for space. there is no good reason the prep rooms need to be cramped. would you like me to add this to the main post? would you like me to make a thread about suggesting the cafeteria food vendors be spaced out more to discourage shoving?

[misto]

if youre worried that the poor xenos would get pummeled if we didnt waste half an hour of our lives lining up to receive treats from human vending machines that sounds like a separate gameplay balance issue that you could make a thread about

if you are worried that marines will revive survivors you kill, maybe you should nest them and infect them instead of killing them. do you not have a way to bring them back to the nest on lv? is the fog in your way? you cant pull them thru the tunnels? these are all things that can be changed.

[Finefire984]

I need to go with a -1. This has been requested so many times. There is bound to be atleast 5 buried in the forgotten suggestions. The idea is cool and all, but like Kneex said, i doesn't allow req to do anything in the beginning of the round. It also takes action away from the MPs. This might spped it up a little, but not too much. You would end up having people pushing and shoving so that they can get their hands on a mag harness and a skele stock. Spacing the vendors out won't help. Finally, there are bayonets and rail lights in the weapon vendors already. If you don't want to wait in line, just grab them and head to briefing.

[Rhicora]

-1

It would be a life without unga dunga, but what kind of life would it be, anyway?

[MrJJJ]

if youre worried that the poor xenos would get pummeled if we didnt waste half an hour of our lives lining up to receive treats from human vending machines that sounds like a separate gameplay balance issue that you could make a thread about

if you are worried that marines will revive survivors you kill, maybe you should nest them and infect them instead of killing them. do you not have a way to bring them back to the nest on lv? is the fog in your way? you cant pull them thru the tunnels? these are all things that can be changed.

"if your worried"

I am not worried about any, and i am not a CM developer, let alone staff, this is what Joshuu, one of the CM developers, said.

The RO line (besides RP of getting equipment issued from a Quartermaster), serves an invisible balance purpose. It gives the aliens some preparation time to set up the battlefield, and the commander time to set up briefing.

On top of this, giving marines unrestricted access to attachments trivializes them a bit.

viewtopic.php?f=86&t=6876&p=73484#p73484

Your suggestion is essentially the same but different method, you are suggesting giving ALL attachments to prep, which would mean marines could get equipped within about 5 minutes or 10, depending how much they hate each other.

Also please capitalize your first letters, i had trouble reading the actual suggestion post.

[misto]

i had another suggestion once that could have gone hand in hand with this one regarding the "invisible balance purpose" nonsense which was to give the aliens boosted plasma regen early in the match to "set up the battlefield" faster, but that was also disliked, because the poor marines would then have to contend with evil super-hives, and now this one is disliked because the poor aliens wouldnt be able to handle marines stepping off the plane sooner.

a game is not set in stone. if balance problems arise they can be counterbalanced in ways that dont rely on sitting around for 15 minutes. if the ro and mps find themselves bored improvements can be made to those jobs instead of clinging to time wasting tradition like this.

[doodeeda]

CM is not JUST a shoot/slash em up. It's good for there to be a lot of time at round start dedicated to briefing, prepping, interaction, RP, getting to know your squadmates, thinking of a battle plan, etc. The only people that are negatively affected by later marine deploy times are survivors. Poor them.
If you want to win as marines, you're going to need coordination. For example, it takes time to outfit the dropships for the MTs and time for command to get on the same page for fire missions, dropship roles, etc. Rushing through the start will just bite you in the ass later.

[NGGJamie]

-1

Getting attachments from Req is a good experience, even if I never bother going to get them. I use the time instead to RP with my squadmates, crack jokes, since I like to play roles with responsibilities I use that time to get my engi-medic gear up. Pilots certainly probably like that time to load up their battleplanes.

CM wouldn't be CM to me without a line of people shouting "; UNGA MUHREEN WANT ATTACHMENT REQ GIVE ATTACHMENT GIVE ATTACHMENT TO MUHREEN"

[WinterClould]

-1 I need to be able to yell at PFC to get out of the line when they cry for a BC.

[Tidomann]

Now the Req line can't laugh at pfc's requesting barrel chargers.

At least squads now can roleplay immediate distaste for eachother when they have to keep asking who took the squad BC from sl/spec/smartgun we and then fight in prep room where mps would have to watch 4 seperate locations and they can't see the fights easily

[caleeb101]

-1

I assume we'd get the minimum amount of 4 vendors (1 for each squad) because a single vendor would cause riots and fights to start. An attachments vendor has 2 Barrel chargers in it. A simple maths question later and you are left with 8 barrel chargers. Now, I was just using the barrel charger as an example because it's basically the best attachment. You'll still have stupid amounts of Quickfires, Burst fire adapters, rail scopes etc.

You could drop a counter argument that you can just take all the good ones out of the vendors. But then where would they go? Having RO give the 'good' attachments out would make this suggestion pointless since they might as well just be giving out all of them if they are giving out some of them. Colonial Marines is an RP game as well. Don't forget that. Even small things such as the early round preparation are worth hanging on to.

It's part of the little RP that is left in the game. The RP to PVP is pretty nicely balanced in my opinion and that ratio doesn't really need to change. It's not because I don't want to play a full on PVP game or RP. It's because I enjoy what CM has offered to me.

[Snypehunter007]

Going to run through this with BMC, tomorrow. Please do not post until after Monday (07/03/17).

[Snypehunter007]

Denied.

This would give cargo nothing to do and would briefings are supposed to be time killers.