The FOB Meta and why you should Attack

[CABAL]

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Classic rose-tinted glasses. Take them off.

Benobiased winrate never contributed anything to RP. Decline of RP was caused by multiple contributions. Streamlined gameplay, removal of SS13 legacy gimmicks, lackluster "trimming" of LRP behaviour, LRP events, Ssethtide and such, but most importantly: Boredom.
No matter what you change in benos, they will still be mainly benos.
Since the old forum there was a talk about HvH that could run itself without admeme intervention, as something to break out of boring benos and a little help for balance purpose as marines wouldn't know what they will fight planetside, thus splitting gear between beno-efficient and human-efficient.

[ChiChii]

----- Moreover there's been a worrying amount of cases of Admins giving the nuke to marines. I think I know why - admins do it so the rounds end faster, and I don't blame them. But apparently the marine side's collective conscience realizes that admins will reward them for staying in the FOB while doing nothing all round, this is further encouraged by xenos often being forced by QM in the past to rush FOBs.

I've been saying that a lot recently too. It feels like every other round QM is yelling at the xenos to suicide push into a mega fob or some staff member is using XOOC to be like "rush the fob guys!" Why would anyone in their right mind siege something that's four Cades deep, and only have one boiler for, and no crushers because (: crusher. I've also been saying that the devs & staff need to make marines responsible for winning/pushing forward the round too. They are there to reclaim the colony and yet they are sitting behind Cades waiting for a nuke to ass blast the entire planet instead?

It feels like Xenos exclusively are responsible for the tempo of the round. The group that has already taken over the planet, and really just needs to push them out of their home is responsible for not only keeping the planet, but blasting a mega fob, and then flying up to a ship, fighting ANOTHER mega fob -- or trying to slowly battle into SD...yeah.

I've been meming it for awhile but I'm actually starting to squint at a "Xeno DEFCON." That would encourage the marines to move their ass out of fob for once and do an attack.

[Corocan]

It feels like every other round QM is yelling at the xenos to suicide push into a mega fob or some staff member is using XOOC to be like "rush the fob guys!"

Yeah, it's kind of unfair that xenos are expected to have the onus in the 'attacking' department when marines have access to CAS, OB, and mortar support to help them push out of their FOBs, which is far more fair than expecting the xenos to throw themselves against the layers and layers of cades to either only die or win a Pyrrhic victory.

I really think it's because the xeno side has the fact that the QM can, logically speaking, DEMAND the xenos do something. The marines can't really be ICly 'ordered' to rush out of their FOBs because humans have agency (and can just say no) and xenos, ICly at least, do not have that luxury. I think we should normalize the concept of having a crazy-ass admiral and his own ship arrive and take command of the operation, demanding the marines either retreat or charge under threat of battlefield execution via the admiral's ship's OB cannons.

I've been meming it for awhile but I'm actually starting to squint at a "Xeno DEFCON." That would encourage the marines to move their ass out of fob for once and do an attack.

Back in the day, it used to be that if you let xenos mature too much, they became unreasonably powerful. The incentive for marines to push out and be aggressive was in the fact that with every tick, the xenos became more and more powerful.

[juliansl]

I had an idea about how to solve this, basically just let the hive evolve much faster if the queen ovipositors in a more vulnerable spot, giving the Marines a good reason to push out if they want to stop the hive from accumulating ancient xenos.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

That'd be nice if Ancient actually means anything on non-queen other than 5 extra HP than Elder. And even right now with Ancient T3s you'll still get bleed out by cades and tesla and B8 L42 and CAS/Mortar/OB; and sure you can wait for 2 hours but marines will also get DEFCON 2 which means tank LTB or 4 spec kits.

[Zahra]

Marines need to understand that to kill a xeno you need a lot of damage on a short period of time or a stun as to not allow them run to heal up. While supressing fire from behind cades provides the damage, it does not prevent xenos from disengaging (except in circustances such as someone stunning the xeno or he is focused by too many marines) and just wait to be in health again.

A well done push is effective because it denies xenos the time to recover unless they run way back a long way and give up substantial ground, and even that solution is still lackluster, because every time they fail to stop the marine push they have to fall back and do it all again.

The way marines do cadehugging currently is just a short term solution, because the only way for it to be effective is for it to hold xenos in one place so OB,CAS, and mortar use can fuck xenos up enough to enable a push.

[Bob]

Marines need to understand that to kill a xeno you need a lot of damage on a short period of time or a stun as to not allow them run to heal up. While supressing fire from behind cades provides the damage, it does not prevent xenos from disengaging (except in circustances such as someone stunning the xeno or he is focused by too many marines) and just wait to be in health again.

A well done push is effective because it denies xenos the time to recover unless they run way back a long way and give up substantial ground, and even that solution is still lackluster, because every time they fail to stop the marine push they have to fall back and do it all again.

The way marines do cadehugging currently is just a short term solution, because the only way for it to be effective is for it to hold xenos in one place so OB,CAS, and mortar use can fuck xenos up enough to enable a push.

The issue though is if the marine team is hiding behind an autism fort, it's already at a point where the xenos are mature enough that the marines can't win on open ground, and are trying to soften up the xenos using CAS/Mortar/OB. Their own gunfire isn't to kill xenos, but rather delay them from breaking cades.

[Flying Dice]

The issue though is if the marine team is hiding behind an autism fort, it's already at a point where the xenos are mature enough that the marines can't win on open ground, and are trying to soften up the xenos using CAS/Mortar/OB. Their own gunfire isn't to kill xenos, but rather delay them from breaking cades.

That's the fault of the marines. Xenos, by and large, are weaker up front and stronger over the long term than they used to be. There's a lot more ways to get instantly no-warning you-lose caught out and killed now than there used to be, but getting plinked at is a lot less effective because of armor, recovery phers, recovery nodes, &c. A semi-coordinated fireteam can easily stun and kill just about any xeno... but you don't see that any more. What you see is a bunch of plinkers hiding behind cades with S8 L42As because it's safe and easy.

The problem with that is that they can't output a lot of damage, especially with long range marine accuracy being confounded by BYOND lag and a fair-sized portion of the playerbase that doesn't understand how to aim. Six guys with AP-loaded M39s, M37A2s, or even standard M41As are a threat. Six guys with L42As, even with AP or I mags, are a minor annoyance to anything except young T1s. Combine that with a general increase of cowardly behavior among marines, and there's very little that can effectively kill a skirmishing elder/ancient T2/3 short of a SADAR direct hit, accurate UGL chain-stun, or CAS/OB strikes that didn't get noticed or called out.

Used to be, if you got stunned by slugs or grenades within sight of a cade line, even behind cover, a bunch of ungas would run out and end you. Now I'm seeing people manage to get a stun on me and run away while all of their buddies keep right on plinking from behind cover. I'm dying less frequently now to robust marines, and it's almost exclusively because where a couple years ago it would be followed up by 3-4 guys with pulse rifles rushing over and killing me, it's now often not followed up at all.

FWIW on the original topic, I play both marine and xeno pretty extensively, and FOB play now is fucking boring. It used to be somewhat entertaining because of needing to set up/counter the old crusher+boiler plays, rushing in to melt cades while boiler gas is up, &c. Now it's dull because crusher is useless and stuff like flak snipers, teslas, and sentry spam make it suicidal to try to force-push the autism-forts, while general marine firepower is diminished largely because of how many people take the smartscope carbine, so marines generally can't get kills or safely push out against competent xenos.

It's a combination of what OP talked about re: FOBs being far easier to build and maintain, admins forcing xenos to suicide-rush autism-forts, and the combo of lower grunt firepower + better xeno regen making it more difficult for marines to attrition xeno health enough to push out again. Both sides have become stronger logistically while becoming weaker offensively, through balance changes to xenos and meta changes to marines.

It's a little thing, but I think at some point the spitter acid spit sticking to and eroding cades got removed? That was one way to help wear down FOBs without the old crusher+boiler meta, but it seems to not be in the game any more.

[Urytion]

Best part of FOB meta is building a megaFOB on the ground, watching it slowly fall as we lose valuable roles like medics, smartgunners, and specs, and then go topside to hold in the tankbay because I'm sure it will be different this time.

[Nyvrem]

I've been meming it for awhile but I'm actually starting to squint at a "Xeno DEFCON." That would encourage the marines to move their ass out of fob for once and do an attack.

Some devs have been toying around with the idea of a 'tech system' which is basically both sides getting buffs if they have map control long enough (scaling towards being OP around the 2 hour mark.)