DEFCON, objectives and so on

[Mann handle]

I personally think the bigger issue is the current state of balance right now. Games end in around 30 minutes from landing, with the siege on the ship being another 10. That's thirty minutes to gather scraps of paper, folders and disks alongside building an FOB, pushing xenos back a little so you can actually defend an area from lightspeed runners, assault the hive if you get a chance to, pull marines who are wounded back and will have to spend 15 minutes in limbo. All of this plus having intel runners run back to an FOB costing time and possibly marines as xenos will just pick marines off as they move around. By the time intel is processed you'll have lost a lot of points on dead marines and possibly have the FOB under siege by xenos who are gassing half of the FOB with a single boiler. By the time you hit Defcon 3, which is the current upper level so far, you would have either won the game via a landslide against unrobust xenos or you would have most likely never achieved Defcon 4 as xenos would have pushed marine skulls into the dirt costing vital points and generally causing you to lose the planet because you lost too much.

But it does give MTs something to do while in the computer room, provided marines give it to them instead of dumping it in the hands of an MP or all over the floor.
In short, it is absolutely pointless to get intel as a plan. All you need is to achieve defcon 4 and use it once you evac from the planet as early as possible without causing some meta criticism. Now you have free marines and materials for cargo to use to squash xenos when they decide to come up.

[Foolosopher]

I came to the conclusion that DEFCON needing objectives to be completed can't work, at least currently. Let's compare it to mutators: with mutators, xenos consistently get more powerful with no drawbacks; they have a stronger maturation than before. DEFCON on the other hand only gets weaker as time passes; if marines die, they lose points; if marines focus on objectives rather than killing xenos they get killed (and lose points), because it leaves them vulnerable. Hell, the worst part is how marines aren't rewarded for the time they remain on the planet like the xenos are. Reward them for holding the FOB! Reward them for killing the Queen! Reward them for their deaths! Giving marines bonuses as they start to get slaughtered is both a new chance for marines to do a comeback and an additional challenge for the xenos that could result in more captures. Marines shouldn't have to be running around the map to get bonuses, they should get them from combat.

[Madventurer]

Personally I have not bothered interacting with DEFCON system since it doesn't bring any tangible rewards before the xeno steamroll comes to town.

[Grentex]

DEFCON essentially becomes worthless once you manage to get to level 4 since your not going past that. Trust me quite a few times we have tried and I have not seen it go any further then 20% since the constant updating objs come in so slow and marines are still most likely dying making the objective you just completed null basically. Not to mention the objectives presume you have FULL control of the map, which is silly because most of the time you really don't, lurkers/runners do (normally). And saying, JUST RECOVER THE BODIES doesn't remedy the problem because what about those that get captured? Your deffo not recovering anything in secure nests unless marines were already steamrolling the Xenos making DEFCON already worthlesss and unneeded.

Honestly if you want a quick remedy to the DEFCON make marine deaths not subtract from the points (if not increasing because marines going MIA suddenly should be raise for concern), and make the obj's after the disk decoding go through faster. However, DEFCON still has the greatest issue of it (as said before) presuming you have map control and that you are will to give out and squad engineer/MT/Synth to go out and not be murdered by Lurker/runner gangs.

[Griffith78]

I like this new system, it gives Marines an interesting task that encourages roleplay and provides flavorful rewards like the cryo distress beacon and very useful rewards like extra OB ammo. Where does the OB ammo spawn by the way?

[Kailey Prevatt]

Being intel squad is generally fun, but with the dead bodies having any input into the level, and moreso when people DIE making DEFCON number raise, (commonly getting us to the -% range) makes attempting these more and more discouraging. After collecting maybe 20-30 disks, documents, in a 3 hour round, and an MP and the CE assisting shipside, we didn't even get 20% completion.

If Marine deaths decreased the DEFCON level, or if it didn't contribute at all that would be much, much better.

[Hunk1]

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.

DUUUUUUUUUDE, if that would be coded, i wouldn't mind spending the whole day decoding intel. One of the reason that i go AWOL or Divert from squad objectives at least on LV-624, is to do INTEL work.

It's a alternative to being on frontlines, I don't like being on the frontlines mainly because of FF. Even sometimes, i get incapacitated within 10min of play, sometimes even die 5 minutes within deployment and that just run my fun. Intelligence officer would be boring at early round but would be fun after deployment.