Attachments-do marines really need them?

[Joe4444]

We just had a round where Jones deleted all the attachments as a experiment and Marines were more coordinated. What's everyone's stance on them? would you guys be happy if we had no attachments/a mag harness for every spec? you'd still be able to make bayonets and stuff of course, and admins could spawn them in maybe you could order them, they'd be expensive though.If marines started with no attachments would you care? I know a lot of you like attachments but for those of you who played in that round(mainly bravo and delta) knowing you were more coordinated, would you sacrifice attachments for that coordination? I generally want to know.

[Steven Sneider]

More data has to be collected on this case so we really cant know for sure but personally I'm against attachments

[NoahKirchner]

I'd be willing to bet that they were more coordinated that round because they wanted to prove the admuns wrong a bit and not all die (also out of necessity), but if it were a common thing they'd go back to being shit.

[username123]

The only attachment that matters is the mag harness for specs, everything else is not really needed.

[Jaketeaking]

i don't think attachments have any effect on co-ordination, whatsoever. that's silly, just some rounds marines are good and listen to orders, mostly they don't. personally, considering the mag harness stock combo have saved my life fuck knows how many times, I'm against removing them

[Jeser]

Since all cool things restricted to Specs, attacments are the only things, that makes it fun to play as grunt. Also, customization of your weaponry for specific roles. (Like improvised Designated Marksman with M41A with grip, stock and scope.

I'm against removing them.

Also, removing attachments would be dumbest move in whole history of CM, comsidering how much effort and time were put in them.

[Joe4444]

i don't think attachments have any effect on co-ordination, whatsoever. that's silly, just some rounds marines are good and listen to orders, mostly they don't. personally, considering the mag harness stock combo have saved my life fuck knows how many times, I'm against removing them

mmkay,think of this: you gear up super fast and get the attachments you want.You go to briefing and hear your squads got FOB duty.Are you gonna stay and watch the FOB with your pimped out gun? or are you gonna listen to orders and stay at the FOB? the typical bladie would run off,A few would stay but those are mainly Pre alpha marines.Think of that as the average baldie.

[Simo94]

just gimme my mag harness i dont care for anything else

[coroneljones]

The marines coordinated more that round since they didnt have their rambo-loadout, such as a mag harness on their rifle stopping it from being lost, they worked together since they KNEW, once they were downed, they were fucked.

[ZDashe]

If I could trade away attachments for more squad cohesion and coordination, I'd gladly do it.

Attachments do give individual marines an advantage, and that changes the mindset of how they fight. However, that doesn't change the core of how marines should fight. I can still rack up kills with other marines in a group with just home made bayonets and rail lights anyway. Still, don't remove them please. No more marine nerfs.. I still enjoy my marksman, quickfire or mag harness M41A loadouts among other things.

[Fritigern]

The marines coordinated more that round since they didnt have their rambo-loadout, such as a mag harness on their rifle stopping it from being lost, they worked together since they KNEW, once they were downed, they were fucked.

Yeah this is confirmation bias at its best.

Marines and Aliens trade rounds regularly depending who is online regardless of attachments. Saying that the lack of attachments reduced rambo behavior is a silly conclusion to take away from this.

Who was in command, who was the squad leaders, who was sending supplies to the marines? Was the queen good? Were the aliens too aggressive or not aggressive enough? Does the lack of attachments mean the CO started his briefing earlier, meaning the marines were on the planet before most aliens could get further in their maturity?

[Jeser]

And again, my points:

1. We had SHITTON of baldies on pre-Alpha, who had managed to run off in SMALL, TIGHT SPACE STATION. You think, HUGE, OPEN SPACES on Lazarus would be less attractive to idiots regardless of having attachments??
2. Attachments - is what bring customization, which is automatically attractive for players. It bring satisfaction from playing, having your rifle modified to suit you.
3. Devs have done shitton of work, while implementing them and balancing them out, spriters have drawn awesome sprites for almost every weapon in game to have attachments. Removing them will make this huge work for nothing.
4. Marines' victories depends on ratio of retards/competent players on human side adding fuck ups of aliens. When marines fuck up and aliens play solid - aliens win and it's logically right. When marines demonstrate good teamwork and minimum of stupidness - aliens have bad times. With removing attachments marines won't become competent out of sudden.

[Kavlo]

I'm fine with marines having no attachments, it was pretty fun that round to watch the marines panic about not having their five red dots and webbing.
Then again during briefing I witnessed at least two marines kill themselves..

[dylanstrategie]

Honestly, I'm still under the belief that some attachments cause Marines to switch from a teamwork to a Rambo mindset, which leads them to do stupid things

Most notably, there's three types that stand out to me :

- "Meta" (generally ex-meta) loadouts, or sometimes even just having a tacticool gun, which give boots the impression they are literally going to dunk every xeno they meet, usually coupled with AP and running everywhere like a maniac. Leads to easy solo kills for Runners/Hunters/Spitters when they run from the group to get their easy killstreaks on the "defenseless T1s"
- Mag Harness users who think they can survive a competent xeno stun/tackle juggling by themselves because their gun magically snaps back in their suit storage. Good Xenos usually either use a stun combo to permadown the Marine (spit/tackle, double tackle with a hunting pair, hugger combat or tackle/paincrit) or just disable one of the Marine's hands so they can't fire at them anymore. This is also pretty bad if the mag harness user is a Spec (I've seen SADAR users overextend BRUTALLY because they seem to think their gun not dropping means they won't either)
- Specialized loadouts like barrel chargers + accuracy, quickfires + burst or range + scopes, leading to extremely predictable and selfish mindsets, like trying to rush up to higher castes to mow them down with AP or trying to lay down "suppresive fire" (spamming in a general direction) and blowing all the ammo. This works against lower Xeno players, but better Xeno players will easily punish those tactics with flanking, pincer attacks to split overextended Marines and ranged harrasment

I highly doubt removing attachments will fix anything, at all, and we're obviously not gonna do that. But it's interesting how rapidly Marine mindsets change once you force them to understand that alone they are literally useless against an even barely competent team of Xenos, but that the fact they come in literal dozens is what is supposed to make the difference

I'm not sure if we can achieve this change in mindset in a better way or if we'll have to suffer Marines to play many more weeks before everyone gets up to gear, but lately there's been a worrying increase in bad behaviors (read, teamwork wise, not rule breaches) like turtling the FOB when it is not under attack, intentionally putting your squad in an useless position "to spare the troops", putting zero effort in fortifications in favor of just walling off a thing or two near Tcomms and dropping a turret and mines in the most predictable spots on the server, giving the Xenos the initiative by trying to set up a shooting gallery in Medbay or Hydro and getting massively outflanked, and as always retreating ultra early to try and safeguard a Sulaco Hangar Defense victory and complaining when all the Xenos come up Ancient and mow down the improvised firing line. All of those lead to abysmal Marine victory rates

[NoahKirchner]

Honestly, I'm still under the belief that some attachments cause Marines to switch from a teamwork to a Rambo mindset, which leads them to do stupid things

Most notably, there's three types that stand out to me :

- "Meta" (generally ex-meta) loadouts, or sometimes even just having a tacticool gun, which give boots the impression they are literally going to dunk every xeno they meet, usually coupled with AP and running everywhere like a maniac. Leads to easy solo kills for Runners/Hunters/Spitters when they run from the group to get their easy killstreaks on the "defenseless T1s"
- Mag Harness users who think they can survive a competent xeno stun/tackle juggling by themselves because their gun magically snaps back in their suit storage. Good Xenos usually either use a stun combo to permadown the Marine (spit/tackle, double tackle with a hunting pair, hugger combat or tackle/paincrit) or just disable one of the Marine's hands so they can't fire at them anymore. This is also pretty bad if the mag harness user is a Spec (I've seen SADAR users overextend BRUTALLY because they seem to think their gun not dropping means they won't either)
- Specialized loadouts like barrel chargers + accuracy, quickfires + burst or range + scopes, leading to extremely predictable and selfish mindsets, like trying to rush up to higher castes to mow them down with AP or trying to lay down "suppresive fire" (spamming in a general direction) and blowing all the ammo. This works against lower Xeno players, but better Xeno players will easily punish those tactics with flanking, pincer attacks to split overextended Marines and ranged harrasment

I highly doubt removing attachments will fix anything, at all, and we're obviously not gonna do that. But it's interesting how rapidly Marine mindsets change once you force them to understand that alone they are literally useless against an even barely competent team of Xenos, but that the fact they come in literal dozens is what is supposed to make the difference

I'm not sure if we can achieve this change in mindset in a better way or if we'll have to suffer Marines to play many more weeks before everyone gets up to gear, but lately there's been a worrying increase in bad behaviors (read, teamwork wise, not rule breaches) like turtling the FOB when it is not under attack, intentionally putting your squad in an useless position "to spare the troops", putting zero effort in fortifications in favor of just walling off a thing or two near Tcomms and dropping a turret and mines in the most predictable spots on the server, giving the Xenos the initiative by trying to set up a shooting gallery in Medbay or Hydro and getting massively outflanked, and as always retreating ultra early to try and safeguard a Sulaco Hangar Defense victory and complaining when all the Xenos come up Ancient and mow down the improvised firing line. All of those lead to abysmal Marine victory rates

In response to and in agreement with this, I'm here to give my testimony of a round I had last night. I latejoined as the delta squad SL, my squad was full of names I'd seen around and the Sulaco ordeal was as it always is, full of shitdickery and a snowflakey XO. Anyways, we get planetside and are tasked with scouting. Takes me about a minute to get my marines to where they need to be (better than usual, normally it takes at least 5 and only have of the marines show up), and we begin our scouting route. They stick with me for the most part, and we end up seeing some xenus and shooting at 'em, didn't kill anything though. After we're slowly tracking some ballsy hunter and a ravager to make sure they don't flank us, we end up at west nexus where we see a huge (not really huge, but lots of t3's and t2's) force of xenomorphs pushing down from the west nexus. We fight, and by we I mean like 7 of us fight while everyone else turtles t-comms. We call for help, none comes, everybody retreats. When I try to lead a push back, like 3 marines follow and I end up losing a hand because I've been rushed, downed, and slashed at by the same ravager like four times (when the marines see ravagers they lolnope the fuck out of there). So now we're all at t-comms and we start getting pushed again from the north, EVERYBODY STARTS FALLING BACK, despite it being a conflict that we could have very, very, VERY easily one because it was basically two ravagers vs. like 35 marines. 10 or so of the marines stand and fight, and pay the ultimate price. I'm fighting with my m4a3 and a throwing knife because I only have one hand, and when I go to drag a wounded to the pod. THERE ARE LIKE 25 MARINES IN THE POD ALL STILL IN FIGHTING CONDITION. The ten people who were fighting slowly but surely dwindles, and I don't blame the last three or four for falling back to the pod, but I kept fighting with my men until I finally got boiler acid'd right infront of the pod while trying to be the last one to board. Rip me.

Then, I heard in dchat that the queen was afk. I joined as the queen and did my usual stuff, asked how the situation was, ordered all of the xenus to the middle of the nexus for a headcount, and memed a bit while I waited to see if the marines were gonna come back. (by memed I mean I told them to dance and they made a giant ass runner line). But that's not the impressive part, the impressive part is that ALL OF THEM CAME when I told them to come to the middle of nexus, and all of them continued to come when we boarded the rasp. As the rasputin went up we got that queen mother announcement, and it detected 78. SEVENTY EIGHT MARINES on the Sulaco vs. 20-30 xenos. We were all pretty sure that we were gonna die but we were gonna try our best anyways. We got topside, fuck ton of marines, I pushed out east with most of the other xenos, screeched, and helped to drive a lot of them off. I bought time for the boilers to melt into engineering, and all of the xenos listened to me. They did their part, the crushers helped saving downed xenos, the ravagers and hunters came in after screeches and finished the job, runners spread out into the vents and killed across the ship, the drones weeded and pulled injured and the spitters injured and killed marines that got too close. But it was still a numbers game, and we lost almost all of our troops while we tried to get into engineering. We held the line best we could, but eventually got pushed back into that hallway connecting the port where you can see space and the room north of lower atmospherics. From there, the drones acted as hunters, the one remaining boiler boiled, and all of the smaller attacking xenos I ordered to spread out. We, alone, in that little room were almost 100% sure we were gonna lose. But as we fought, we noticed just how many of them working together killed, and so kept doing it. The drones acted as hunters, coming in after screeches, I played a more crusher-like role, soaking up bullets and stunning marines, and the boiler coordinated with us to launch globs behind the marines that pushed up, blocking off their escapes. In that one hallway, four xenos killed or critically injured at least 10-15 marines, all who were more than equipped to kill us. Why did we kill them? Partly because they were either scared of pushing and stayed towards the back, or because they pushed with their rambo guns and got stunlocked and ripped to fucking shreds. Their lack of teamwork got them killed because they could *not* organize and carry through with a push or even organize a strong defensive. After we pushed them back, we decided to go up the cargo ladder after the bottom deck had been taken and some of the combat-castes hooked back up with us. We came up cargo, found a poor Iron bear in disposals and after what seemed like 100 billion slashes they died. We then moved into the engine room, we killed some more IB's pretty buck standard until we got to the escape pods. In the escape pods, the only thing keeping us from really killing more marines and pushing like hell were the GL's spammed by a single doctor, (might've been researcher), but even with those grenade spams we likely killed 4 or 5 more oomans while not losing anybody because we worked in the same way. (then we got killed by like 30 iron bears that got called by an ert even though WE COULD'VE CLUTCHED REEEE :P )

This just goes to show that working together, no matter the team, yields at least a moderate level of success. If on the bottom deck we all would have tried to do what the marines did and not organize pushes, we would have all died to charged bullet + GL + flamethrower spam, but because we worked together, we survived AND managed to beat them. I think a way that you could help to encourage teamwork is to remove SOME attachments. Namely the charger, the quickfire, and the burst fire. Keep the ones for accuracy but take out the ones that make you a one man killing machine because that makes you wanna go "keel some xenu scum wiff my sooped up weapon, mang", instead of building the FOB and then taking a defensive position at medical. Teamwork, also, breeds RP, so if you want the marines to RP more (because right now CM is a low rp server, it's not even close to medium RP, shush) have them work together and get to know each-other through the course of a round. That will give them more genuine reactions if one dies or is injured, and it'll give way to more friendliness and comradery between marines if one needs pulled back or helped up when they know each other at least a little bit. It's a lot harder to help baldie #6969 than it is to help someone you know and trust, so encouraging teamwork that leads to trust will be a better way for the marines to function.

I could go on for ages about this, but the post would be like a college thesis, so I'll stop here.

[Aracino]

I don't have much to say but ^

[Nick123q23]

Attachments add a lot of variety and customization. that would be missed if they were removed
But do marines need them? No. Most of the time, unless I'm a squad leader I outright skip attachments because the RO line brings out the cancer in people.
The unmodified M41A is a great, all around weapon, especially now that it starts with an underslung grenade launcher

[Renomaki]

I myself had many rounds where I went out without attachments, and even when I was able to get them, I often don't require a whole lot. I had rounds where all I asked for was a single red dot and was perfectly content.

Weapon mods can be quite helpful, don't get me wrong, but I think a lot of marines tend to get too reliant on them to the point that they end up raging if the RO dares to not give them what they want, and if the RO closes up shop to punish marines for being rowdy, they start a riot and blow open doors.

People need to learn that attachments alone aren't going to help you survive, let alone win the day.

[Imperaxum]

"We came up cargo, found a poor Iron bear in disposals and after what seemed like 100 billion slashes they died."

Heh, I was that Iron Bear, Yaroslava Yeltsina or something like that. Got seperated from my vodka-swigging team, treated some marines, emoted "don't kill each other" with the RO, then hid in disposals asking over ruskie comms for help. Then motherfucking xenos pop in and RIP.

[NoahKirchner]

Heh, I was that Iron Bear, Yaroslava Yeltsina or something like that. Got seperated from my vodka-swigging team, treated some marines, emoted "don't kill each other" with the RO, then hid in disposals asking over ruskie comms for help. Then motherfucking xenos pop in and RIP.

Haha, I felt bad because you had no chance. I saw the /me succumb though and lol'd a bit.

[Steven Sneider]

On that round I skipped attachments and even tho I got slashed hard by ravs I still managed to survive till the end.
Honestly the only good attachment is the UGL as that helped with the IB and xenos.

[Simo94]

what is it with marines retreating with 60+ these days? happened to me like 5 times i was xeno this past week, also its bad as a marine when we are 5 defending FOB and going down in limbs while 60 marines chilling on the sulaco like wtf, i dont even see north river marine attacks anymore, we dont even make it to tablefort, the situation right now is: make FOB>defend FOB for 5min>retreat and wait for xenos to attack sulaco>when xenos attack the sulaco dont even fight them>retreat from lower deck before they land>on the upper deck as soon as xenos land retreat to evac pods with 40 marines while 5 marines are fighting in briefing, its a never ending cycle of retreating and everytime it happens 5-10 marines are left behind to die and thus the marines are wiped one by one

ps: remove evac pods, fight or die

[Monoo]

I personally never use attachments, other than the UGL.

Ironsight are all ya need, baby.

(Plus the RO line is pure hell)

[Joe4444]

I personally never use attachments, other than the UGL.

Ironsight are all ya need, baby.

(Plus the RO line is pure hell)

I thought I was the only one....

[Bigchilly]

Most marines use attachments to counter alien play styles, if a spec knows their gonna get pounced on and have their gun melted (this is a shitty fucking tactic and is funny as hell though) they are gonna get a mag harness. Then again a good shot from from a UGL is like throwing a hugger at a marine with no helmet, easy target. Not to mention close range the masterkey shotgun can kill a crusher, easily.

EDIT:
I think if attachments were removed a good way to balance it out is to buff the pulse rifle so its alike the "Aliens" movie version, fast firing, 99 rounds, hell on earth.