DEFCON, objectives and so on

[ThePiachu]

Hey everyone!

So as you may have noticed, DEFCON is in. It's a system to reward you for completing Objectives, which were introduced a long while ago before being put on a hiatus due to dev team changes.

Since it was first publicly tested, it became quite obvious Objectives are quite hard to accomplish. So far we only had 1 round (the first one) to reach DEFCON 3, while most others end at DEFCON 4. This is obviously rather daunting, especially given how much work it takes to actually complete the objectives.

DEFCON system in its current form was introduced to give you at least some reward for doing the Objectives without reworking the Objective system. We will be looking into reworking the Objective system by itself as well to make it at least a bit more fun to accomplish and let you reach into the lower levels of DEFCON within some reasonable amount of effort.

In the meantime, please don't get discouraged by the current state of the Objective system - things won't stay this way.

[edgardo]

If The marine side didn't lose any objectives points regarding to dead marines would be better, normally you can reach to defcon 4 and get stuck at 10-15%, The problem is after the first engagement, Marines normally start losing numbers, and since Each dead marine discount a bit of the objectives points, you can end with 5% before almayer crash.

[spookydonut]

You need to flatten the objective tree, it's too deep for marine attention spans, that was my conclusion after observing phase one of my plan for objectives.

[FGRSentinel]

To expand on what Edagrdo and Spooky said, the current DEFCON objectives make the entire concept somewhat pointless: going after intel costs you Marines, which lowers the DEFCON score and doesn't guarantee any new intel, let alone a matching folder and disk, while reducing the number of Marines directly fighting the benos. Some people seem to have issues figuring out exactly where the disks need to be placed after they're decrypted, so if the computer lab itself isn't one of the rooms it counts in (rather than just the storage room directly east or the server room north of that) collected intel doesn't count. There's even been a few debates about if gibbed Marines count against both minimizing Marine losses and recovering KIA Marines since they're dead and there's no body to recover or not (which if it does count against both it makes the Queen's gut ability a meta tactic as she could just gib every Marine corpse she comes across in case they're pushed back), but as Xenos tend to drag anyone they grab behind their lines before killing them, Marines are often doubly punished for casualties they take.

The only time I've seen Marines get past DEFCON 4 was that one test round where everyone was obsessively focused on it, and even that took insanely heavy admin intervention. The Xenos camped all the intel they could find and pushed back hard against the Marines since Hive Memory was also being tested and they didn't have anything to lose if a Mature T3 died. The Marines couldn't even push out to get their first intel item to the point where the Xenos had to be abombed twice to make them back off and allow the DEFCON mechanics to be tested. Marines got mutiple waves of reinforcements, which reduced the percentage of the Marine force that was lost relative to the number of Marines deployed. The list goes on.

The simple fact is, DEFCON in its current implementation doesn't work as a way for Marines to bounce back as intended. If the Marines desperately need the DEFCON rewards to bounce back, they can't collect enough intel to get to DEFCON 4. If Marines can get enough intel to unlock DEFCON rewards, they obviously have enough map control that they don't need DEFCON rewards, and even if they did, they'll never get above DEFCON 4 to get the fun options anyways, which may be part of why Marines don't focus on it too much.

[Build_R_]

I agree that dead bodies probably shouldn't have a negative effect on DEFCON percent, or at least they should have less of an effect.

Also when is there gonna be information about it on the wiki? I know a whole lot of people are really lost.

[Heraclitus]

From my experience playing the marines I like it a lot, this is an interesting change however after the objective system is reworked it might have too big an impact on how rounds play out for me. I don't want DEFCON to dominate the game, I want it to be optional - which it is so that's fine.

As others have said, marine losses make it very hard. I wouldn't say marines shouldn't be punished for playing badly though, and I like having a reason to evac dead bodies. That won't add anything for people who just want to unga dunga but it does for me. The negative from dead marines just needs to be toned down, almost everyone seems to agree on that.

What I would also love to see is objectives listed in order of priority/point gain, e.g. getting tcomms and power up gives you 5%, each survivor recovered alive is worth 2%, and then intel or dead colonists.

This does raise a small problem for me though, what about the survivors completing objectives like setting up tcomms and power? Some people won't see it as an issue but I don't like the fact that you can reach DEFCON 4 before the marines even deploy.

I would suggest making tcomms and power both partially time based, something like keeping tcomms up for 30 mins. In fact, there's probably a lot of ways you could balance some objectives by having them increase score over time.

[Swagile]

Just give us ASRS update instead.

DEFCON's purpose is to give us a bounce back from being absolutely demolished, but considering you have to be on the OFFENSIVE to get intel, it completely destroys the entire point of DEFCON's intention.

You can't bounce back when you have no way to bounce back.

ASRS at least let us bunker down as it sent down supplies of metal, spec kits, SG kits, plastisteel, and ammo and ramped this up later on into the round, encouraging us to bring back the game.

[Solarmare]

Deaths shouldn't count, bringing corpses up and morging them being more valuable might be good.
Objectives need to be worth the time and investment of manpower and marine losses to be viable.
Amount of objectives available can be cut down to make it more uniform and sensible.

[Renomaki]

Like others have implied, I really don't like how marine causalities can make reaching higher DEFCOM ranks nearly impossible.

If anything, shouldn't it make it go HIGHER? Not that I want it to do that, since it would break balance, but at the same time, I figured this whole DEFCOM thing was supposed to be a form of escalation for the marines.

Like how xenos grow stronger over time, both via their personal survival and their queen's hive upgrades/perks, Marines SHOULD be able to access new assets as the match moves along. The longer the battle, the bigger the toys, you know? But since marine casualties COST you points, it makes reaching higher ranks difficult. I don't know how powerful the higher DEFCOM levels are, but they probably aren't powerful enough to be made so difficult as to be rare to reach, moreso considering the context of any given match: A colony is being overrun by aliens, and only the marines can stop it from spreading further. This isn't a small scale skirmish, this is a growing infestation that kills dozens of marines with ease and could result in the loss of a multi-billion dollar colony.

Honestly, if we just removed the system that deducts points for every marine death, then maybe we'd finally get to reach and experience the higher DEFCOM levels, and marines would be encouraged to go out of their way to collect colony assets because they know it'll actually GIVE them something, instead of just hoping they get something.

... Course, that is if anyone DOES it in the first place. You could have cleaned up a good chunk of the colony, but if no one is taking the time to decode the disks, then nothing gets done to begin with. Marine shipside staff need to start developing a routine around this, and we need to figure out who will be primarily in charge of doing the intel computing.

[CABAL]

... Course, that is if anyone DOES it in the first place. You could have cleaned up a good chunk of the colony, but if no one is taking the time to decode the disks, then nothing gets done to begin with. Marine shipside staff need to start developing a routine around this, and we need to figure out who will be primarily in charge of doing the intel computing.

Sounds like job for Intelligence Officer.
If who decoded disk would matter, then IO and CL could fight each other for them. Not in Greytide manner, but in high RP one! Reports, acts and pens right in the eye!

DEFCON could be split on "USCM" and "W-Y" points, each giving different "prizes".

They would even have IC reason to fight for them. CL want to keep WY secrets and get promotion, while IO want to discover WY secrets and als oget promotion.
Sending MP's after one another, giving few bucks to a random PFC to harass CL a bit, etc.