Command and survivors.

[Digitalattack]

The other idea I had (probably bad), which would go hand in hand with my other suggestion, would be to increase the number of survivors by a lot, but reduce their access to lethals. So lots of colonists who are guaranteed to be captured or killed. But if there’s enough of them, the aliens just aren’t going to be able to capture them fast enough to get everyone. And guess what, everyone who is a colonist, gets killed, and comes back as an ungarine... won’t have to attend briefing. Sold?

In regards to survivor lethal's, LV has a single HG shotgun and the DB in the shack that's easy to get to, otherwise you need to restore power or break in to secure to get any other decent equipment or ammo(Only one box of shotgun ammo outside secure).

Solaris has 2 HG's in sec as well as 2 MP27's in operations, MP27's an't that great though 2 boxes of buckshot and 2/3 boxes of slugs, likely considered the best balanced map by survivors.

Prison has a ridiculously large amount of guns as well as ammo, even just looking at armoury you have a decent amount of M16 ammo as at least 2/3 HG's with buckshot boxes for each as well as Grenades, considered the best map for gear by most.

Ice has 2 HG's in admin as well as 1 HG in disposals however, only two box's of slugs on the surface, in order to get any buckshot or other weapons you had to head underground towards the underground armoury.

In short unless we are talking prison it's pretty hard to reduce the already low amount of weapons and ammo that spawn, I'm also not mentioning corsat as I don't really have the experience to talk about corsat as it never get's voted.
and in regards to the large(2?) amount of survivor topics around current I'll likely make a gitlab suggestion for changes related to them AFTER XSS, marine defense update and MOBA xeno's are released to main so I can check what things they might need, because once all three of those are released the role it's self it be at the worst it's been in a long time.

[UnwaveringGrey]

The only reason I see not too let the survivors respawn is a weird continuity reason. They were already planetside as survivors with their character. Now they spawn as a marine but otherwise as the same character? Or are they forced to choose a different name?

[Nyvrem]

The only reason I see not too let the survivors respawn is a weird continuity reason. They were already planetside as survivors with their character. Now they spawn as a marine but otherwise as the same character? Or are they forced to choose a different name?

Forcing them to choose a different name shouldn't be hard. This should just fall under Rule 12 tbph

[Moosetasm]

Forcing them to choose a different name shouldn't be hard. This should just fall under Rule 12 tbph

Agreed. This already happens any round where an emergency response team responds to a distress beacon. The respawn would be more like a guaranteed in on an ERT, only you get to choose your equipment as a PFC.

[UnwaveringGrey]

I would love to see a toggle option for that to happen the other way. So by default you spawn as a named survivor and can respawn as a random PFC. If you toggle it on then you spawn as a random survivor, and if you die you get to come back and play as the PFC marine that you queued up as. Then again, that's a lot of work to allow people to play their snowflake marines...

[Moosetasm]

I would love to see a toggle option for that to happen the other way. So by default you spawn as a named survivor and can respawn as a random PFC. If you toggle it on then you spawn as a random survivor, and if you die you get to come back and play as the PFC marine that you queued up as. Then again, that's a lot of work to allow people to play their snowflake marines...

That seems reasonable. I’m not sure how they’d manage it code wise, but probably start with the code they use for random name spawning with PMCs (or UPP, how scandalous) then on the respawn, just treat them as if they’d joined as a squad marine. I thought about maybe letting them join in with the same window pop up as “Join the USCM” just in case the Marines are critically short on squad medics or engineers. But that might be giving them a little too much, especially since they can always just get a mini medic or mini engi kit as a PFC.

[Medi]

Frankly I've always seen survivors as high risk, high reward. The average survivor is killed or capped within 20 minutes making their overall survival rate low. My current issues with survivors are as follows:

1. Little reason outside of RP to play one unless you're just going it for the small challenge that is ultimately unsatisfying.
2. Marines and Commanders especially dont care because survivors are at best 1 more person toting arms. Otherwise they're a hindrance/annoyance.
3. You're really only a survivor for a max of 30min due to you either dying or getting whisked away to the ship.

Suggestions to fix:
1. Give survivors value by having their IDs or some other aspect of their living person aid the DEFCON.
2. Give them ic notes regarding good weapons/resources/research material. Makes them being alive to share or profit from that knowledge useful.
3. Consider giving survivors occasional objectives to give them progression and directive aside from just living till the Marines get there.