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Thread: Objectives & Defcon balancing

  1. #11
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    Attempting to grab papers and bring them to Alamo as an SL isn't easy. The only thing I wish they would add to the vendors is a document pouch for SLs and not PFCs. Not many PFCs buy them. And asking a PFC doesn't really work out well for me as they don't listen.

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Swagile View Post
    DEFCON 4 is the most reachable and easiest as getting comms + Power is usually put up every round, and it gives one fresh wave of reinforcements.

    DEFCON 3 is the most useful, yet takes SO long to get to that the effort isn't proportional to the reward. Having to put so many people on intel duty means so many people NOT fighting the xenos, so you get steam rolled hard. One xenos hit Elder Lurker, its too dangerous to collect intel unless your in squads, or you have 2-3 people with you that have tac shotguns or BC shotguns, with one being powergaming (by High Staff) and the other being very limited and if you give BC shotguns to the Intel squad you don't have BC shotguns killing T3's at the front so you run into the SAME PROBLEM of diverting TOO MANY RESOURCES and TIME to shitty DEFCON that barely rewards you for your effort.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreven View Post
    Rounds need to become long again for the DEFCON system to realize its full potential imo
    These are the biggest cruxes with the Defcon system. Rounds are, for the most part, too short and often require extreme amounts of resources and manpower to lower Defcon towards something that would be useful.

  3. #13
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    As a CO, I have to balance sending marines to gather Intel versus having more troops ready for that initial first conflict. On most of the maps, I'd rather get Defcon 4 and stop there because usually by the time we hit 4 we know where the enemy is at and it's worth more to send marines to fight instead of hunting for more Intel. If the initial conflict wasn't such a huge determining factor in how the rest of the round plays out, or if that time period from deploying to that first major conflict was longer it'd still be worth pursuing Intel. As it is, I usually find it more worth my while to get Defcon 4 and then commit everyone to the fight. It marines are getting pushed back because they didn't have manpower when they first needed it, getting to lower Defcon levels won't matter if we're quickly being routed and evacuated.

  4. #14
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    Glad to see a lot of people agree with me on Defcons current state right now the system is really just a niche gimmick.

  5. #15
    Senior Member Madventurer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dreven View Post
    Rounds need to become long again for the DEFCON system to realize its full potential imo
    This very much
    Tyson 'Bunny' Sphere


  6. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dreven View Post
    Rounds need to become long again for the DEFCON system to realize its full potential imo
    Quote Originally Posted by Madventurer View Post
    This very much
    Won't change anything. I've seen 3 hour rounds with a squad dedicated to getting intel only reach about 30%-50% intel recovered on LV, which is the easiest map to recover intel.

    Defcon is just flat out worthless. There's too many things to collect, and they provide too little in points. Things like a queen corpse provides the same points as a runner corpse or a larva corpse. Worse, defcon by its nature only ramps up for marines when they're already winning and don't need it - so you'll see things like a tank or a fresh wave of reinforcements when the hive is down to 15 xenos and no longer has map control to prevent intel/bodies from being collected, but when there's 40 xenos and marines are in most need of defcon whatever, they'll never get past defcon 4.

    Defcon needs fewer objectives; objectives that matter more, and it needs to ramp up alongside xenos.

    Defcon should be more King of the Hill / Control Points based:

    1. Several locations around the map that marines can control for defcon points
    2. Computers in these areas periodically produce data disks
    3. When these disks are brought back to the almayer you get the defcon points

    Gets rid of the easter egg hunt. Gives clearly defined areas of conflict for marines to hold/take from aliens. In conjunction with nightmare can help shake up the meta on each map so it's a little different every time.

    The biggest stumbling block is that it requires redoing every map with control points in mind. Because marines are not able to control much that isn't as confined/defensible as LV's LZ1<->Hydro Road<->Hydro.

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by AcuteCircle View Post
    I love the idea but right now it's not executed correctly. Most of the time no one wants to decode the disks because it's annoying to do and then you have to decode like 20 just to get to defcon 4
    Yeah "just" 20 disk for the second step out of 5.

  8. #18
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    I really don't see how a longer round will contribute much to the Defcon level.

  9. #19
    Whitelisted Captain FGRSentinel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boersgard View Post
    Won't change anything. I've seen 3 hour rounds with a squad dedicated to getting intel only reach about 30%-50% intel recovered on LV, which is the easiest map to recover intel.

    Defcon is just flat out worthless. There's too many things to collect, and they provide too little in points. Things like a queen corpse provides the same points as a runner corpse or a larva corpse. Worse, defcon by its nature only ramps up for marines when they're already winning and don't need it - so you'll see things like a tank or a fresh wave of reinforcements when the hive is down to 15 xenos and no longer has map control to prevent intel/bodies from being collected, but when there's 40 xenos and marines are in most need of defcon whatever, they'll never get past defcon 4.
    The issue is that Marines can collect half of the objectives and only get the full point value for a quarter of it, give or take. The reason being? It doesn't matter if you collected half the folders, half the disks, and half the paper scraps and progress reports if none of the papers identify any of the collected folders or the identified folders don't match up with any disks.

    Let me explain why. In a recent round I was looking through folders and couldn't find anything. I tossed them out of frustration and grabbed a paper scrap that mentioned one of the folders I was just reading through. Curious, I picked it up and, surprisingly, it now revealed the location of a disk and the password to decrypt it. In order to decrypt a disk to make it provide points, you need to find its password in a folder. To find a password in a folder, at least one paper or report has to be found mentioning that specific folder.

    And this is the crux of the issue: you almost never find a folder near the disk it leads to or the paper that lets you find the code in it.

    You can find a scrap of paper in Big Red's Marshall's office that leads to a yellow folder in ETA, but you find white folder as well. When/if you find that, you search it and find out the disk is in Lambda. You happen to find a random disk in the same room which, while you can't figure it out yet, is the one that the Marshall's folder leads to. If you go to Lambda, you'll find the disk from the ETA folder and maybe another scrap that leads to the Marshall's folder, letting you finally get the code from it and decrypt the ETA disk while you have to physically get the Lambda disk back to Almayer.

    You only get points for each item if it's returned, and you must return a disk to decrypt it. Once you do so, it points to a data terminal somewhere on the map that's most likely depowered and gives you the code. It's only when you have all three items on Almayer and the data terminal's information that you get the full value of that intel chain... But in order to complete one intel chain you basically need total map control right now, at which point you're just delaying if you're still going after intel.
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  10. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boersgard View Post
    Won't change anything. I've seen 3 hour rounds with a squad dedicated to getting intel only reach about 30%-50% intel recovered on LV, which is the easiest map to recover intel.

    Defcon is just flat out worthless. There's too many things to collect, and they provide too little in points. Things like a queen corpse provides the same points as a runner corpse or a larva corpse. Worse, defcon by its nature only ramps up for marines when they're already winning and don't need it - so you'll see things like a tank or a fresh wave of reinforcements when the hive is down to 15 xenos and no longer has map control to prevent intel/bodies from being collected, but when there's 40 xenos and marines are in most need of defcon whatever, they'll never get past defcon 4.

    Defcon needs fewer objectives; objectives that matter more, and it needs to ramp up alongside xenos.

    Defcon should be more King of the Hill / Control Points based:

    1. Several locations around the map that marines can control for defcon points
    2. Computers in these areas periodically produce data disks
    3. When these disks are brought back to the almayer you get the defcon points

    Gets rid of the easter egg hunt. Gives clearly defined areas of conflict for marines to hold/take from aliens. In conjunction with nightmare can help shake up the meta on each map so it's a little different every time.

    The biggest stumbling block is that it requires redoing every map with control points in mind. Because marines are not able to control much that isn't as confined/defensible as LV's LZ1<->Hydro Road<->Hydro.
    In a way, this system is already in place. If you fix Engineering and Tcomms (only Engineering on LV), you get 10% on DEFCON aka DEFCON 4. Engineering is 5%, Tcomms is 5%, and this is also why we almost always get DEFCON 4 if marines focus on getting those up. They are the only worthwhile objectives to get up, and they also benefit marines (comms and power for lights).

    If we had more things that focused on us CONTROLLING an area and getting DEFCON points slowly in return, it would actually make sense to make FOB's in that area, and for xenos to not stall and just attack, because if they stall till they are Elder they will die to a wave of constant unga reinforcements and a Tank.

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