Desert Dam General Discussion

[Awesomesauce935]

Noticed there were two bluespace beakers at research

[Karmac]

I think the LZ being hard to defend could be a good thing. If it has enough room around it then it could actually be good for xenos to ambush people leaving the FOB running to evac or people dropping into a hot LZ and needing to work together to get to the FOB.

We've already got maps with very strong LZs like Ice, prison, big red. Would be nice to have a map where the LZ isn't your main holding spot and could actually be kinda dangerous. LV kinda fucked this up by making the area left of the LZ kinnnndddaaa okay to hold but kinddddda trash at the same time while also making the nexus an interesting place to hold that the meta has abandoned because people suck dick.

this man is dumb and bad

do not be this man

LZ's do a trash job of holding as it is, marines are failing at defense more than they ever have. Making the lives of anyone at tempting to hold out for that DS evacuation that much harder is complete stupidity, not to mention the fact every map has a section just outside the FOB xenos patrol to catch out wounded marines, lone marines, or medics.

Cease retardation immediatedly.

[edgardo]

what am I looking at?



There was a.. lot of announcements about it.

this would actually be one of the best changes, the saturation on the orange makes it really ugly at some point, desaturing it is a good idea

[Sora9567]

For anyone who missed out on the map test, I did end up uploading my footage of the round, in case anyone wants more details with how the map played.

https://youtu.be/fZvQJspbrbU

[FGRSentinel]

My observations about the test from a PO's perspective, mostly what I saw and heard over comms:

1. Larger maps, by virtue of how dropships, deployment, and resupply work for the Marines relative to benos, will always have a general bias towards xenos due to the fact that if binoculars are lost the Marines lose the ability to deploy resources to the front via supply drops and instead have to depend on transporting supplies from a static LZ, just as redeployment would work. On the tested map, this means that Marines fighting in the center have to rely on supply runners hauling a pack across roughly the full length of Big Red without getting picked off by flanking xenos, at which point the Marines may as well have lost. Likewise, if you're wounded and need to be brought up, it's going to be a long walk across a truly massive map back to the front since your only options are to land on the western side of the map above or below the dam.

2. The location of Telecomms and the map's gimmick seems to force Command staff to make a choice between securing Alamo against capture or reducing the length of the supply chain to Tcomms and more quickly activating one of the two water treatment plants by virtue of both being closer to LZ2, making it a more tactically vital location if you don't rely on ooc knowledge of the benos. Meanwhile LZ1 remains the only one of the two that can be captured. I think we actually had a point during the test where the benos were attempting to bypass having to fight the Marines on the surface by virtue of simply walking into an undefended LZ1 and scouting it for the console while the Marines were engaged in combat near the south or southeast part of the map, which as point 1 implies would give the benos plenty of time to hijack Alamo and get it up before the bulk of the Marines could get back.

3. The Map's gimmick of restricting Marine movement, if not already being looked at, is too disruptive of gameplay flow in favor of the xenos, who are unaffected by the water while the Marines are almost instantly killed. This means that, at first contact, the xenos can simply drag Marines into the water to kill them or bait less aware Marines into chasing them through it, letting the environment do the work of killing the Marines while suffering no downsides themselves.

4.The core components for all Marine infrastructure, from Medbay and Req to dropships, the only method of transporting Marines and main source of air-support, are incapable of handling the number of Marines this map seems to require to "fill out" or provide assistance where it's needed. To give an idea, you need to look at the issue of point 1: in a large map, the Marines need more grunts and fortifications to secure their flanks, which requires more bullets and materials to build and hold or push, putting more strain on Req and shortening the amount of time they have before the xenos can simply walk over them. Likewise, more Marines fighting means more Marines that can get injured or killed, which puts even more of a pressure on an already often-overwhelmed Medbay. The main issue, however, for a map of this size is that it's impractical to take wounded all the way back to the LZ: if you're crabbed on the eastern side of the map, even if you aren't dragged to a nest, you still have to cover a distance well over the full size of Big Red or rely on CASEVAC... Which is unable to bring up more than two Marines per trip, and that's if the Medics and POs are on top of everything.

We're talking about systems meant to manage, at most, the needs of 1-1 1/2 platoons (44- 66) of Marines with a bit of strain on good days and start to buckle under the load of 80+ on the best days or 50-ish on the worst. At a glance, the map seems to be designed to comfortably fit a mid-to-large Company (120-200) Marines without getting too cramped... And the test showed just how much of a logistical nightmare this was. The Dropships were too small to transport everyone in a single trip and, despite the fact that the large amount of wide open areas would have made it the perfect map for CAS, it wasn't called in and even if it was the quality would have been poor due to the fact that CASEVAC was almost flooded with wounded Marines, something that was (ironically) likely only manageable because the lethal gimmick apparently permakilled large numbers of Marines. If it wasn't for that fact, the "two Marines per trip" limit would have made CASEVAC 100% unreliable on a map where it was almost necessary to have. Not only that, but the lack of scaling with the dropship fabricator's points means CAS would rapidly be depleted on a map of this size with a population to fill it out. Maps of this size either need a third LZ where one of the birds can be swapped over to land closer to the front after a certain condition is met or for CASEVAC to be split between two distinct birds with Medevac optimized to pick up more Marines... Which brings us to a point that I think will be highly unpopular.

Almayer and everything about it is, sadly, inadequate for handling the logistics required to maintain a military force of the size described above. Req's two prep lines were practically overwhelmed from what I heard, the briefing room was far too small for a Company-sized force, and if it wasn't for so many being permakilled, Medbay hell would have been a foregone conclusion. Not only that, but Req often struggles to keep a force half this large properly equipped due to the slow point replenishment (an issue they share with the dropship fabricator) and the Almayer's hangar bay is only designed to field two birds, meaning that splitting CASEVAC between two ships (Normandy and possibly a dedicated fighter/bomber) is out of the question. This test, sadly, seems to play strongly towards all of the Marines' major weaknesses: resource scarcity and limited supply/manpower deployment options and the Almayer itself. If this map is a test of just the map, some of the systems could be adjusted to be more efficient with such high numbers of Marines. If the idea is to test to see how larger maps perform, I feel that it needs to be said that Almayer will stand as a major limiting factor with a poorly-optimized Requisitions, a cramped Medbay, and a hangar and support craft complement that's simply not able to handle the necessary resource/manpower flow to keep the Marines competitive as maps grow larger.

[RavingManiac]

Observed the round. Some notes:

• Marines got the hint that the water was dangerous pretty quick. The first few that found the river were cautious, and once someone was hurt, quickly relayed this over the radio. That said, at multiple points, entire squads of marines deliberately charged across narrower portions of the river with the idea of simply tanking the damage. They mostly got to the other side alive, but were in no condition to fight or return. This ended poorly for them.

• Activation of the water treatment took a small amount of prompting, and only occurred after significant marine casualties. Once the water treatment plants were activated, marines were able to push the aliens into the caves, but were defeated there. If water treatment plants had been activated early-on, aliens might have lost. I expect future rounds to revolve around marines attacking, and aliens defending, the water treatment plants.

• The sheer size of the map seems to be encouraging more squad-centric play on both sides. Players are sticking together, because running alone will get you completely isolated.

• New code will prevent aliens dragging marines into the water. It's too abuseable to make bodies irretrievable.

[kastion]

Observed the round. Some notes:

• Marines got the hint that the water was dangerous pretty quick. The first few that found the river were cautious, and once someone was hurt, quickly relayed this over the radio. That said, at multiple points, entire squads of marines deliberately charged across narrower portions of the river with the idea of simply tanking the damage. They mostly got to the other side alive, but were in no condition to fight or return. This ended poorly for them.

• Activation of the water treatment took a small amount of prompting, and only occurred after significant marine casualties. Once the water treatment plants were activated, marines were able to push the aliens into the caves, but were defeated there. If water treatment plants had been activated early-on, aliens might have lost. I expect future rounds to revolve around marines attacking, and aliens defending, the water treatment plants.

• The sheer size of the map seems to be encouraging more squad-centric play on both sides. Players are sticking together, because running alone will get you completely isolated.

• New code will prevent aliens dragging marines into the water. It's too abuseable to make bodies irretrievable.

what do you mean by new code will prevent aliens dragging marines into water?

[awan]

what do you mean by new code will prevent aliens dragging marines into water?

Your drag gets broken when you try to drag a marine into the water.
And maybe warriors cannot fling people in.

Anyways we know the size is big but we already have a plan for that.

[misto]

a river being a real obstacle for once raises certain interesting possibilities in my mind, such as an engineering bridgelaying vehicle or inflatable rafts, but the water treatment plant makes all that simply unnecessary

[misto]

Your drag gets broken when you try to drag a marine into the water.
And maybe warriors cannot fling people in.

Anyways we know the size is big but we already have a plan for that.

will runners still be able to super speed push people in by running into them? :3

[Ketrai]

tbh marines could benefit from some simply coded trucks to move goods quick here. just cargo trucks. also, make it so xenos can disable at least half the plants, but marines can indeed build bridges. It seems baffling to me that a militaristic force of this magnitude can't spare materials for bridges.

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

Your drag gets broken when you try to drag a marine into the water.
And maybe warriors cannot fling people in.

Anyways we know the size is big but we already have a plan for that.

Might as well replace the river with a big wall then.

[TheMaskedMan2]

I kinda wish LV's fog was the death acid river instead. Maybe still tied to a timer, but... y'know.

Anyways, that's off topic. I think it's a little too early to talk balance too much and we really need to see how Xenos/Marines react once it's been around for multiple rounds.

Also back to the size, I hope the devs don't just make it smaller, I love how big it is, but that's thing about opinions.

[misto]

it is generally better to make a map bigger than it needs to be and having portions go unused rather than risking it being too small and resulting in cramped and awkward situations

[FGRSentinel]

Personally, as I said, a map of this size would be great if it was rolled out as part of a test for dropships to have some sort of variable landing zones and some Command and Conquer-style resource mechanic: maybe there's a hangar in the center of the map connected to a mine that generates a material every five minutes that can be collected and sent to the Almayer to give them a random boost of req points, but the material's too heavy to just carry back to LZ1 and the hangar can't be accessed at the start.

For instance, maybe the hangar has a power supply that's not linked to the rest of the colony (or a backup and the main link is completely destroyed by the time the Marines land) to allow the hangar door to open and the benos can sabotage later on. While the hangar's powered, either dropship can be swapped over to land at "LZ3" from either the Almayer or their normal LZ and launch to either of those locations from there, but if the hangar loses power they're either stuck there until power is restored or have to use the dropship's power to open the door for it to leave, at which point it closes behind them. Materials could be loaded via power loader onto the dropship along with wounded, launched to Almayer, and then it can drop back down with fresh Marines, supplies, and equipment. This would make it a serious strategic location for the Marines and quite possibly the location where the benos actually get the dropship in most rounds by cutting the power and using option B to launch it up while Marines assault to try to retake the hangar and mine.

[awan]

We already have quite a solid plan on how to "deal" with the map size. In general, the goal is to have a large map where you keep playing/fighting in different area's
This is also why it is such a bad map to fob on. That is also part of the plan.
I am not going to reveal any specifics. But in general we know what changes we want to make.

[Renomaki]

This is also why it is such a bad map to fob on. That is also part of the plan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnsiZOJjfUg

A map... Where FoBs aren't all that viable?

I am curious to see how defense is handled for the marine side on this map.

[monkeysfist101]

There's a spelling mistake in the description of the Chigusa Landing Sign. It reads, "A large sign that reads 'Chigusa mining col-', with the rest being obscured by what looks to be tried blood, and damage." Tried should be changed to dried.

[ColdSuit]

I only observed the map for about five minutes, but I was extremely impressed with the size of the map and how urbanized it was. How stable was the map with the massive population?

[Justicer3792]

Well, what I noticed as a Lurker at 227 pop on this map: lag really ramps up server side.
Another thing is that Marines will eventually learn to not string themselves out to become perfect targets, but that may take a while.

[nekcy]

Map is very pretty with a lot of cool little touches. Sprites looks great. Water tastes good. Airlocks/doors could have more names of the locations or more signs indicating where you are.
It's a bit too big and disorienting at first but I think we'll get used to it in time and force the squads to be more tight together.
So far I've only played once as a marine and I think theres too many places that can be filled with weeds thats overwhelming.

[NethIafins]

I'm not the one who wrote the map,
I'm not the one who dictates where our balance should go

BUT

This is the map we should balance our gameplay around (for highpop obviously), not vice versa. If Marines can't find delaying Xenos, we give marines the ability, and not fix the map. And so on

[awan]

I will tell you exactly what we changed.

We added in a sensor tower. If you have it on xeno's show up on the tactical map. That stops delayliens hard in its track.

We also added in tall grass it helps hide yourself as alien and it is to be used to ambush the tank and or marines.

[Karmac]

>tall grass

[Dolth]

Or... Would be nice of xeno actually take damage in red water. Not much. But maybe half of being on fire tick damage.