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Thread: Arguing about FOBs and the such

  1. #1
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    Arguing about FOBs and the such

    So Ive been playing engineer for... well long enough to notice how many different schools and doctrines of cade building exist. Ranging from the ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶i̶s̶t̶i̶c̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶s̶ smallest mortar pits to the highpop mega FOBs, there are tons of ways to constructs fortifications. And there are some masterminds who know all these ways.


    But sadly, for the beginner engineer, there aren't many ways to learn how to build a good FOB in the current meta, using what few mats and manpower they have. While the wiki page itself is viable, the guides it links to are - not useless, but - outdated


    So this is why I created this thread, to ask and argue about what a good FOB, or simply, a good cadeline looks like.

    Please help, I dont wanna build autism forts

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    The most important part of designing any cadeline, is determining its purpose before putting it up.

    - If it’s a backdoor / flank cade (like East & South LZ1 on LV 624) then your basic cade is going to be one line of metal cades, with a single tile set as a plasteel cade. If the line sees a lot of back & forth traffic, you might want to upgrade to having two tiles worth of plasteel. These two plasteel cades need not be contiguous. A single sentry, or single manned m56 emplacement should be sufficient for keeping away any harassers.
    - If it’s a front door / main egress cade line, you’ll want three contiguous plasteel cades, with all three panels linked so that they raise and lower together. This allows for a tank, APC, or large number of marines to pass through with minimal congestion. You’ll want at least one, preferably two, sentry guns or manned m56 emplacements. They should be placed so as to cause as little blockage of the main thoroughfare as possible, while giving some cover to those manning the weapons.

    Setup:
    - Preferably, you want any xeno slashing the cade to be fully exposed, so make sure it’s set back from a wall, not even with it.
    - When creating secondary lines of cades, line up the plasteel cade openings so people don’t have to maneuver to get to the next one.
    - There should be room for at least three rows worth of marines between cade lines. Any closer and you’re going to have marines running into each other and moving each other and just making a mess of things.
    - An unmanned sentry is no substitute for a manned cadeline, even without an m56. A sentry can fire, but won’t be able to warn about a sudden Queen flank.

    Those are just basics. There’s obviously more.

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    Another thing that's often glossed over is that you want to have a lot of clear area in front of barricades, if there's only a few tiles then xenos can just run forward and slash a few times before running back without being punished.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Moosetasm View Post
    - Preferably, you want any xeno slashing the cade to be fully exposed, so make sure it’s set back from a wall, not even with it.
    Quote Originally Posted by juliansl View Post
    Another thing that's often glossed over is that you want to have a lot of clear area in front of barricades, if there's only a few tiles then xenos can just run forward and slash a few times before running back without being punished.
    So its worth buying a lot of C4 and blowing up town?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Grabowski View Post
    So its worth buying a lot of C4 and blowing up town?
    In my opinion, yes. Though I also recommend getting good at dismantling walls; torch, screwdriver, wirecutters, wrench, crowbar, shotgun, in this order and three walls at a time.

  6. #6
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    In this new meta sandbags are worth their weight in gold, use metal for barbed wire if there arent any cases where the cade HAS to be metal. If you have any leftover sandbags use them for repairs.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grabowski View Post
    So its worth buying a lot of C4 and blowing up town?
    In the past, I’d say yes. But with how hard it is to get materials now, I’d keep the walls together and force the xenos into chokepoints. You go blowing everything up, you prolly won’t have enou metal to replace it all.

  8. #8
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    be a real gamer engineer and buy 9 C4's, and use those to make flanks

    if you make a mega FOB and its not DEFCON 2, your doing something wrong, as it inspires marines to be NPC cade huggers instead of pushing xenos

    LZ FOB's at most should have 1 cade line in all directions until DEFCON 3 or higher, then start building double lines; DEFCON 2 is when you should have double or even triple lines at LZ-1 because your nearing nuke time; thats the only time an LZ should have double or more cade lines in all directions

    understand also that as a combat engineer you are the engineer of all marine traffic. if ungas see a route fully sandbagged / metal caded off, they will not jump it. this is more important than you think:

    IF A UNGA SEES A LINE OF BARBED WIRE CADES ON ONE FLANK THEY WILL NOT GO THAT DIRECTION

    this allows you to control the movement of marines even better than good SL's, as most ungas have no idea who their SL is; they just follow the lines of cades to the front. so its YOUR job as a combat engi to properly funnel marines in the right direction

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swagile View Post
    understand also that as a combat engineer you are the engineer of all marine traffic. if ungas see a route fully sandbagged / metal caded off, they will not jump it. this is more important than you think:

    IF A UNGA SEES A LINE OF BARBED WIRE CADES ON ONE FLANK THEY WILL NOT GO THAT DIRECTION

    this allows you to control the movement of marines even better than good SL's, as most ungas have no idea who their SL is; they just follow the lines of cades to the front. so its YOUR job as a combat engi to properly funnel marines in the right direction
    Tell that to the APC, or one of the ungas that just ran off with the entire HEDP box. Marines go where they want, vehicles more so. If they see a line of sandbags where they’re used to going, they’ll just destroy it.

    As for cade lines, having just one cade line is just asking for an FOB or LZ breach. One line of cades can go down before anyone can respond to your warning, provided you can even type fast enough to get the warning out. This is also provided you have all the flanks manned at all times, and good luck with that. Two lines means you have time to hear a sentry gun or PFC firing, or a belltower making noise, can run over type out a call for assistance more helpful than the ever worthless “Queen!” or “help!” messages we see in chat so often, and expect reinforcements before the LZ is swarming with xenos.

    I’ll agree that after two lines, everything is pretty much set until you’re on the fast track for the bomb being delivered.

    But... someone has to man it, or it will get melted or torn up by a single t1 xeno. That’s all it takes. And guarding an FOB is mighty boring for people who have no patience, or don’t appreciate RP, or both. So, they have to find something to occupy the time. And guess what? Building autism forts is something they can do that doesn’t take them away from the FOB they’re guarding.

    So, until the in-game equivalent of horseshoes is developed, you’re going to have FOBs of ever-increasing size. Deploying the FOB marines elsewhere just means the FOB is melted or overrun when you return. I’ve seen maybe two or three rounds, total in all my time playing, where no FOB was built or maintained and it didn’t result in a catastrophic loss for the marines, usually due to xenos flanking into the LZ.

    At the beginning of the year, we still had megaFOBs on a regular basis, ones even larger than what we have now. And it didn’t keep the xenos out. Far from it. Each line of cades only really equaled one or two minutes of delay (if that) before the FOB was overrun. They certainly weren’t the impenetrable walls that they’ve become. Back then, you either defended and lost line after line after line until being forced to evac, or you mounted your counter attack. But just the act of being able to fall back within the FOB, abandoning entire sections of outer FOB, allowed marines to perform their own flanks to pincer the xenos and either drive them out of the FOB so they could be run to ground, or wipe them out entirely. Or it wouldn’t work, and the marines would be wiped out entirely.

    Right now, everyone is cadehugging because the cades are tougher than they used to be, and while the materials for them are far harder to accumulate, people still get bored. Bored people will search for materials, and then they will build. Only now, those walls are durable enough that marines feel safe getting behind them to fight. If the cade lines were consistently falling, but in a predictable manner, marines would have time to see they’re on borrowed time, prompting either an evac (marines are evaccing with too many marines right now, IMO) or a counter offensive.

    Long story short, cadehugging bad, martial arts good, obey my dog but cutting back on the FOB isn’t really the answer, unless some other cade changes are made.

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