Todays atmos-phoron fire discussion

[Dyne]

Begins here- viewtopic.php?f=63&p=43208#p43208
Not to clog the topic itself we can all exchange opinions here.

Why should this be treated any differently than breaching? Both are an abuse of atmos, so the point is moot. Wyatt is right to bring up aliens breaching into his argument. Aliens breaching can screw over both sides, just as much as controlled phoron fires are.

Breaching has nothing to do with this. I remember a totally reverse discussion we had on a Queen nesting the pod before marines arriving.
The aliens main "defence arguement" was that marines in some previous round meta-d and attacked the hive from the point go.
So, it is finding counter arguements and justifying an underhand (and possibly unlawfull) tactic by the "other side atrocities".

In the fire-event in question aliens didnt breach, were not planning on breaching, and would have very likely just overwhelmed the defenders.


Still, I'll answer your question, just to clarify the difference and importance of this issue.
Different effects and counters. Marines have EVA gear, masks and O2, so they have a chance to survive and fight on.
In this case all aliens but 3 died in the explosion or as direct result of such an explosion.
No counter. Deadly effect.

What will stop marines from doing it again?
What will stop aliens from "metaing their meta" and never going up?

[Mitchs98]

Begins here- viewtopic.php?f=63&p=43208#p43208
Not to clog the topic itself we can all exchange opinions here.
Breaching has nothing to do with this. I remember a totally reverse discussion we had on a Queen nesting the pod before marines arriving.
The aliens main "defence arguement" was that marines in some previous round meta-d and attacked the hive from the point go.
So, it is finding counter arguements and justifying an underhand (and possibly unlawfull) tactic by the "other side atrocities".

In the fire-event in question aliens didnt breach, were not planning on breaching, and would have very likely just overwhelmed the defenders.


Still, I'll answer your question, just to clarify the difference and importance of this issue.
Different effects and counters. Marines have EVA gear, masks and O2, so they have a chance to survive and fight on.
In this case all aliens but 3 died in the explosion or as direct result of such an explosion.
No counter. Deadly effect.

What will stop marines from doing it again?
What will stop aliens from "metaing their meta" and never going up?

Marines have a few soft suits that provide next to no protection and are difficult to get to. Depending on the breached area, impossible. Hard to get internals depending on the situation as well.

It'd also be meta in assuming the aliens are resistant to space and will breach into space to get to them, so they have no reason to stockpile suits or internals in the sulaco FOB. I don't see how the marines have a viable counter, whatsoever.

Once again, neither tactic has much of a counter.

[Dyne]

What will stop marines from doing it again?
What will stop aliens from "metaing their meta" and never going up?

Oh, and this round aliens are metaing the meta, hard and justified. I'll tell how when the round is over.

[Mac]

The biggest problem was that the explosion was done without warning fellow marines and losing marine lives. Breaching is a tactic that isn't counterable, so it's reasonable to allow this. However, Apop has said that the aliens being on the Sulaco means the marines aren't supposed to win, which is me playing devil's advocate with my own position. I honestly had no problem with the phoron fire but I know that the marines that died in it did and that's understandable. As a person that plays a shipbound character around 90% of the time, I enjoy being able to do things on the Sulaco that give the marines a chance rather than "gg you lost cause the aliens are on." From a lore perspective, aliens being on the ship being a loss for the marines makes sense. However, from a gameplay perspective the marines lose something like 70% of the time and as such where is the fun in that if the ship is supposed to be a roll over and die futile fight.

[Neray]

Mitchs98 said everything in his last post in that thread about Wyatt. Can't add anything else to it, so I'll just agree.

[Dyne]

The biggest problem was that the explosion was done without warning fellow marines and losing marine lives. Breaching is a tactic that isn't counterable, so it's reasonable to allow this. .

The biggest problem is it starts an arms race of underhanded tricks, and it killed around a dozen aliens without any interaction.

[Mac]

The biggest problem is it starts an arms race of underhanded tricks, and it killed around a dozen aliens without any interaction.

So when a lone alien sneaks on board and breaches the walls, it's not underhanded?

[Dyne]

So when a lone alien sneaks on board and breaches the walls, it's not underhanded?

"You killed ten people without interaction!" "But you killed nine people yesterday by sneaky breaching!"

A lone alien can be stopped, killed, and the walls resealed.
Actually in the example that we are discussing marines re-sealed the hangar (breached by their own SADAR) and could have landed safely, if aliens didnt nobly attack (again) without any chance of victory.

[Mac]

"You killed ten people without interaction!" "But you killed nine people yesterday by sneaky breaching!"

A lone alien can be stopped, killed, and the walls resealed.
Actually in the example that we are discussing marines re-sealed the hangar (breached by their own SADAR) and could have landed safely, if aliens didnt nobly attack (again) without any chance of victory.

I'm aware of the events of the round as I was in it, and we as a command staff were actually discussing a counter-assault when the aliens came up. Again, as an argument, the marines hopelessly fight back the aliens on the ship all the time and in this particular case the marine assault was coming as we were discussing it on the command channel. It's a two-way street here. The marines knew the aliens were coming up via the announcement on the shuttle, they set up a defense (unbeknownst to many of us who were setting up upper-level defenses) and enacted it. It was the decision of 1 player to do it, but again the same thing happens when a lone alien breaches the Sulaco by sneaking aboard. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right, but the player did what he thought was best to defend the ship. It worked, it may have been "underhanded" but again I think it's comparable to an alien breach when they don't want to have a head-on confrontation.

[Dyne]

One player killed 10+ aliens.
Without said aliens having a chance to fight back.

I repeat my questions:
What will stop marines from doing it again?
What will stop aliens from "metaing their meta" and never going up?

[Mac]

Honestly the meta will just evolve if this becomes commonplace. I don't expect it will as most people forget about atmos in terms of weapon applications and this will likely fall by the wayside. Aliens will send up single-creature boarding parties to scout instead of nearly their entire force like they did this time. It is disadvantagous for the marines to do this as well as someone is going to die doing it and if the aliens send an empty ship up and you have a room flooded with plasma then you're going to die anyway. It makes it difficult for the marines to counterassault as well unless they scrub the phoron off.

[MikeHdez97]

if the aliens can breach,i think the marines can set on fire the lower deck
this atmos abuse is balanced in both sides... but this is not the solution
there should be a rule about this for prevent the atmos abuse in both sides

[Mitchs98]

One player killed 10+ aliens.
Without said aliens having a chance to fight back.

I repeat my questions:
What will stop marines from doing it again?
What will stop aliens from "metaing their meta" and never going up?

One alien killed 20+ marines by breaching key areas without the marines having a chance to fight back.

Whats going to stop the aliens from doing it again?
Why would they?

In fact. What will stop marines from not going back down after coming into contact with ONE alien?

Why would the marines have any incentive to go back down after sweeping the colony, shooting a few aliens, and inducting a few losses?

What would stop them? Rules? There are none to it, unless an admin decides to pull rule 0. What are they going to do? Ban the entire server population?

But wait, without players there is no server. Sure, a drastic example, but valid.

What's to stop the marines from saying "well boys, them things are huge we stand no chance. Leggo."? A few MP officers?

How is it meta to use fire to cleanse an infestation? Fire is fire, fire kills all, xeno or not. How is fire meta?

Sure, it's an underhanded tactic. But I see no one really pushing to get breaching brought under control, and it's the most underhanded tactic there is.

You may imply the marines get /some/ interaction. Sure. Shoot at the alien while dying from lack of air and pressure within 1-2 minutes, provided they don't tackle spam you.

There is feasibly no difference. Both are underhanded, both are shitty things to do. Aliens wanna be jerks and abuse atmos? Guess what, marines just got a counter.

Perhaps this won't fall out of play, I hope it doesn't. It might scare xeno players into no breaching more often. It might even persuade staff to finalize rules on breaching and atmos.

Sure, some bad may come of it. But the potential for good is much higher.

[Dyne]

And the potential for good is what, exactly?

[Toroic]

We can play the "who can use more un-fun mechanics." After synchronized hosts popping and the nonsense that is tackling as a non-tier three or hunter, firebombs, xeno breaching, and marine crippling are going to be the baseline strategy.

I'm not sure that's a better game, but that's where we're headed.