My take on CM midgame and some ways how to avoid it

[sg2002]

I agree that xenos can and should do more LZ counterattacks, but doing them is not as simple and that's the reason we don't see that many of them. That round we were lucky that somebody opened Tcomms for us. Otherwise you need to get a boiler there and this would in turn lead to more attention from Bravo and roundstart Bravo had no time to go MIA yet. Then it can hold the push alone, while marines clear the hive and kill whoever didn't join the attack. If I were leading the OP from the CIC I probably would not even route much help from the metarush, since I can always let xenos to take FOB and fight on Almayer later with most of my forces intact.

Don't see much problem in defining metarush as marines penetrating the initial hive defenses in force before 1234, that is before T3s get to mature.

And yes, you can code metarushes into irrelevance, by giving xenos faster maturing before marines land\easier plasma on builder castes and so on. I don't have a problem with marines landing at 1215 as long as they're not metarushing.

[Casada_Radio]

snip

I am beginning to see why xenos dont counter rush often now, it was this worry about shipside attack and that you jumpstart a panic evacuation. That is an understandable fear that all xenos have is that you leave too many marines on the almayer to hit you back.

So I think I should elaborate what I have learned observing & playing as Fobbit as well as doing backline harass recently.

You say it is luck that the flank was opened, which in most cases it is true. But to be very frank the fobbits of late has reduced to a sad state. You have no idea how many cades I have managed to melt as a burrower and how badly ignored our FOB squads are to command when we screamed for help for 30-40 minutes.

That added with the current fobbit team. I once saw with my own eyes the entire FOB squad let their SL to die outside the cades to a small pack of xenos, just picked off like that and want to unga to random directions instead of doing actual FOB. Command of late has invested their interest in the push and you have to be lucky to get the RO to understand your situation. I even once as xeno melted all cades in front of a marine facing me who was apparently AFK.

That was not the only round where the flank was kept open(at least early), there are more instances where flanks were kept opened and waited till the Crusher arrives to break them open. This is now the time where the old fobbits no longer play FOB.

Second of course is the destruction of Marine Tcomms, which will create pure disorder and chaos for the marines since SLs and fellow marines cannot report xeno locations and rally marines. They will go in different directions of retreat OR make their own decisions of survival. When radio goes silent, it is the best time to pick everyone off and quickly

Third is the element of surprise, and you have to be quick with the attack. At the moment marines don't realise this(until they read this of course).

If you ask me, you don't use boilers to open flanks, you use Crushers. They are quicker and the charging noises can mean they travel in different directions. Only at the 2nd to 3rd charge on the same directions will the FOB team notice. You only use boilers when you are out of Crushers. But this is just my observation, there might be sharper marines around.

However, in all this I have to agree and admit with you that it is difficult to pull this off. I would say this counter-rush is going to stay workable until the xenos did it well often enough the marines learned how to counter it and react to it. By that time their main push momentum would be lessened and all this talk about metarush would cease to exist. This is just my speculation.

I think xenos used to mature faster, but the marines had a lot of difficulty executing real pushes and had to rely on ACTUAL quote unquote metarushes to end the game quickly. This was the time Hivelords, Burrowers and Carriers werent nerfed in that Hivelords can spam buildings into existence with their insane plasma regen & build speed. And I think Devs are having difficulty finding the fine line for this. If you ask me, they can leave maturity as it is but rescale/buff the Hivelord and Burrower. Last time, ok fair game our average lowpop was 60 and it was quite unreal to have so few marines deal with so many structures meant for highpop and you don't have that kind of ammo to blast away anyway. But now with 100 as the new lowpop...I think we should rethink on the Hivelord again. And burrower. Either that or we should get 2 hivelords and 2 drone as the new start.

[captainyankee]

Admit it, you've been there. A round you wished for, you and all your friends are playing. First 15 minutes are quite normal, marines drop and go to max sec, everyone is having a good time. Good marines are padding their KD on cocky mature T2s and vice versa. And then something, something goes terribly wrong. The metarush siren, admins start wilding in MOOC and all the 2020 moderators are yelling at the CO that briefed you to walk west on prison for making such a terrible mistake.... Sadly, before you can finish the sentence you're rushed by 3 admin spawned T3s making you shut off the game and drink yourself to unconsciousness

Yuuuup usually after I have just finished babysitting an IO or filling sandbags. Metarush revenge has a lot of collateral damage.

I gotta agree with LV being the best map in certain conditions. I think, Avalanchee, the issue isn't stalemates as much as it is uh CBT. We can fight over Tfort for an hour, a stalemate technically, but with lots of attacks and counterattacks. On prison I don't expect to retake the yard if we lose it unless xenos specifically fall back to bait out. The area north of the bar on Ice is similar, it's fun to try and get a foothold in the dorms, even if you fall back, there's enough space that boiler clouds don't necessarily halt 100% of progress, and side flanks are possible. Other locations, like the east caves chokepoint on big red, are a fucking pain in the ass. 4 marines can functionally do things at that chokepoint, everyone else better have IFF or be comfortable with FF. It's not fun for xenos because marines have so much trouble pushing through, that the horde on the other side will absolutely destroy any xeno dumb enough to try.

Metarushes are a pain in the ass. Either command sends 3 squads to do it, leaving no one anywhere else on the map, or one squad who gets wiped out wondering where backup is. Best case scenario is marines win and the round restarts so we can all actually play the game. Worst case both sides end up decimated and we gotta wait an hour for xenos to mature and marines to get wounded back up and fighting.

[Swagile]

CBT is so tiresome that id be up for giving Queen her charge ability back.

This meta is that fucking terrible.

You just get stuck staring at gas for hours on end because neither side has the ability to push but has the ability to defend.

Its just tiresome.

[Troika]

Xenos may be mobile in general, but the queen generally can't be, especially early in the round. It's basically not realistically possible to move all of the infected monkeys, etc out of the way of a marine push.

[Gut_TC]

Sometimes people are lame.
Like Marines rushed despite Command's orders. Then either they managed it or died horribly by chokes to xenos to either capture or kill.
Then Xeno themselves not listening to Queen's order or being uncoordinated that they eventually died to Sadar, Smartguns and other fun methods and ended up with Hive on worrying numbers and lack of decent caste combination or even offensive ones to withstand marines frontline despite their first upperhand.

Now both sides are weak and needed time to recovery or keep pressing on desperately like going low number assaults. But marines are just matters of time and efforts to gather Intel and bodies to keep that Defcon going till they get to use the LTB Tank or nuke or somehow finally exterminate all the Xeno by themselves.
And Xeno can either finally start some good capture for numbers and evolutions then getting Queen deovi to finally launch a decisive assault or keep the same phase by lurking around FOB or roads killing some but with small impacts to the marines and then died as Young or Mature leading the Hive back to same numbers when they were struggling leaving only T3 Ancients to still being alive and hard to get rid off. Which means another couple of hours till Defcon 1 or one of the sides finally makes critical decision and win or lose such as official Evac, Xenos invading Almayer or entire hive sustained major casualties in a push that no longer able to recover and is forced not to delay.

Buuuut yeah... recently I've been into 4 hours rounds a lot. People made both great and lame decisions that kept the battle on stalemates constantly until marines get the better toys or *good hits*.

Anyway. I rather stay in FOB midgame and help with Intel or improving FOB unless the Command order to push.

[Swagile]

Also.

Really sick and tired of developers catering to the CBT gameplay loop.

They just remodeled Prison Station to be even more of a chokehold bullshit map, which eliminates yet another decent map out of the map pool. We are down to LV and Solaris Ridge again.

Prison Stations new chokehold at Chapel is cancerous and hard to push, and allows for CBT to flourish which forces early retreats and hiding behind the 5 line cade LZ-1 till a Queen gets bored, tries to tunnel monorail south, then dies when marines all push her and she fails to escape in the tunnel.

CORSAT is a joke and CBT heaven; there's an entire fucking dome designed around Prison Station called Omega dome that has no CAS / Mortar / OB's able to be used and Tank can't get in, and its so far away from the LZ's that there is no way to retreat if you fail the push, so its usually one push, then a massive retreat and bunker down behind cades cause fuck that.

SOROS is a laggy piece of shit map designed, SURPRISINGLY NOT, around PRISON STATION, being a completely CBT filled map except they replaced walls with hand rails you can't move around to save your life and metal roofs to prevent medevacs and normal CAS (flares only on metal roofs).

The jungle is also so far away from LZ's that pushing into its CBT filled territory (while Medbay itself is CBT) is horrendous.

Trijent Dam.... this one's OK but not great. The only redeeming factor is that Tank can go anywhere on this map except the labs.

Labs are pretty CBT filled as well and far away from LZ's so you need to push full force and win due to xeno incompetence or one push to justify a early retreat to FOB.

See the pattern here? Developers are designing maps around the worst gameplay loop right now, and RE-DESIGNING EXISTING MAPS TO MAKE THEM WORSE.

STOP.

Just STOP. No one fucking wants to stare at orange gas for 2 hours till either side gets bored and suicides. Stop playing boiler and play any caste or marine role besides boiler and maybe then yall will realize how boring it is to play right now unless you meta rush.

[TeknoKot]

entire post

can we make a new word that isn't CBT

[CABAL]

can we make a new word that isn't CBT

Super Tedious Defence gameplay loop.

[Just L]

can we make a new word that isn't CBT

No, because calling it CBT is funny and makes people who have no sense of humor mad.